The tool I chose to explore is Nearpod. I have very minimal experience with it, having only used a template a colleague made once. I wanted to take a deeper dive into it in the hopes that I could use it to its full potential. Nearpod is a way to make lessons more interactive. Lessons can be assigned for a student to work at their own pace or you can have all of the class on the same part of the lesson at the same time. This does require 1:1 devices with internet connection, however there is also an option to just project the lesson onto the screen without the use of student devices. Nearpod offers several different ways for teachers to check understanding as students move through the lesson. Some components teachers can add to their lessons include videos, drag and drop style questions, matching, polls, and even games students can play against each other! I was able to explore the free version, though there are three paid tiers above the free one, each with more capabilities. With the free version, teachers can have up to 40 students join their lesson. I created a lesson where my students had to answer a poll question, watch a video from YouTube, and then answer multiple choice questions about the video.
https://nearpod.com/
https://nearpod.com/