#359 – Creating Interactive Presentations with Curipod

#359 — Creating Interactive Presentations with Curipod

AVID Open Access
11 min

Keywords
interactive presentations, curipod tool, AI lesson generator, curify my slides, blank lesson creation, daily routines, teacher management, student engagement, AI feedback, lesson customization, classroom management, teacher resources, AI in education, lesson ideas, student activities

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Paul Beckermann 0:01 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I’m your host, Paul Beckermann.

Student 0:05 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 The topic of today’s episode is Creating Interactive Presentations with Curipod. Digital slideshows are a staple for teachers presenting new content. Whether you’re designing station work playlists or a full group presentation, slideshows allow you to present content in a clear and interesting way. Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides have long been popular go-to slideshow tools for teachers, and they still are today. However, as teachers are looking to add additional interactivity to their presentations, to better engage students and also be able to leverage the time saving power of AI, new tools have emerged that are helping teachers accomplish both of these goals. One of those tools is Curipod.

Student 1:01 Here’s the, here’s the, here’s the tool for today.

Paul Beckermann 1:05 In simple terms, Curipod is a slideshow creation tool that allows you to quickly and easily add interactive student activities into a slideshow presentation. Students join your presentation on their own devices using either a QR code or a join code. Then once they’re in, their screens follow along with your presentation in front of the room.

When you arrive in an activity slide, you click a button to begin the activity. This unlocks the student screens, and your students are then able to actively participate. They might be given an open-ended question to answer, a poll, a word cloud activity, a drawing activity, or an activity that provides AI-generated feedback. When the presentation has ended, you can then review student progress using a built-in dashboard.

So with that big picture context in mind, let’s take a deeper dive into five key features of the program and explore how they work.

Student 1:59 Here are your video five. Here are your five tips.

Paul Beckermann 2:06 Number one: Creating a Lesson. You have three main options for creating a lesson in Curipod. The first is to use the AI Lesson Generator. When you click the Create Lesson button, you get options for how you want to get started. You can choose a lesson category, build writing skills or prepare for a test, or you can choose Generate Lesson to have AI help you create a first draft of your lesson.

With each of these options, you get fields to fill out. This is essentially helping you write an effective AI prompt. So you don’t have to be an AI expert to use this tool, it’ll guide you. You’ll be asked to enter a topic, a standard or learning objective, as well as a grade level, language, and any other additional criteria that you’d included. Then you simply click the Get Lesson button.

As I was practicing using this I entered figurative language, including simile, metaphor, and personification for 11th grade English speaking students.

When I submitted, the AI went to work creating my lesson. After about a minute, I was presented with an 11-slide lesson that included a title slide, five content slides, and five different activity slides that were mixed in, prompting students to actively participate in and practice the skills associated with figurative language.

Activities included an open-ended question asking students to share what they already knew about figurative language. So that was a nice way to begin a lesson. Another slide prompted them to write a metaphor and receive AI-generated feedback on their efforts. There was also an offline partner discussion question, as well as an AI whiteboard activity and a poll question.

While I would probably not use this exactly as it was given to me, it could give me a good starting point and save me some valuable time and effort creating a first draft of a lesson. Since everything is editable, this would be really easy to revise.

Number two is Curify My Slides.

If you already have a slideshow that you and simply want to add interactivity to it, the Curify My Slides option is probably the one you want. With this option, you’re prompted to either upload your presentation or select one from your Google Drive. As with the lesson creation, you still choose a grade level, language, and additional criteria before clicking Get Lesson.

Personally, I think I this option better because it gives me a little more control over my design and content. Besides, I already have a lot of content created, and I don’t want to start from scratch with all of those. I just want to make my existing resources more interactive.

To try it out, I uploaded a professional development slideshow about generative AI. All of my original slides remained in the presentation, and Curipod sprinkled in activity slides throughout the presentation to add interactivity and mental processing activities. There were, again, polls, open-ended questions.

AI feedback prompts, whiteboard activities, and word clouds. If I didn’t an activity, I could simply delete it. If I wanted to add something new that wasn’t automatically generated by AI, I could do that too. Overall, this option is nice for quickly getting engagement ideas for a presentation that you already have created.

Number three: Create a Blank Lesson. If you to be more in control and want to start from scratch with a blank slideshow, you can do that too. With this option, you will be taken to a screen that looks a lot a typical slideshow creation tool in Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint. It’ll probably seem very familiar. You can add slides and all the typical design and content elements that you’re used to having access to: text, images, video, background shapes, things that.

You also have access to the activity tool, so you can insert the interactive activities between your content slides, so you can add open-ended questions, drawing activities, polls, word clouds, and AI feedback prompts, which allows students to get AI-generated instant feedback on their ideas.

Number four: Establish Daily Routines. Let’s say you don’t need a full lesson. You just want a quick activity to start your lesson off or to finish it. That’s where this option comes in. With this tool, you get help creating vocabulary activities, bell ringers, brain breaks, SEL activities, and exit tickets. When you select one of these options, you’re taken to a page of sample activities. Simply select one that sounds on target for your needs, then either use it as it is or customize it.

Number five: Teacher Management. One of the nice things about a tool Curipod is that it’s designed for teachers. That means they built in classroom management tools into the teacher experience.

For example, as soon as you create a slideshow, you automatically get the student access codes printed at the top of the slides. No need to go through extra steps to give students access. Then, when you’re sharing the slideshow with students, you control when they interact on their devices. If the slides are information only, there’s a note on the student screen to look up to the front of the room, pay attention to the teacher.

When an activity appears, the teacher must click the Start button to unlock the student screens, allowing them to provide an answer. There’s a convenient timer counting down to pace the activity, and the teacher can end the task early, which automatically submits any student work at the point where it’s at. If you’re worried about teachers submitting inappropriate responses, there is a teacher moderation feature as well that allows you to review and approve student input before it shows publicly to the full class.

When the lesson is complete, you have access to a My Report section which provides details on student interaction during the presentation, as well as AI summaries that indicate what the class best understood, what they need to work on, and which individual students might need a little extra help.

As with any AI-generated feedback, it’s important that you bring your teacher lens into this equation and make sure you agree with the feedback. AI can save you lots of time, but it can also be wrong, so make sure you’re always an active partner in any feedback or evaluation process. Still, it can be a helpful thought partner. So how might I use Curipod?

Intro Music 8:14 How do I use this? Integration inspiration.

Paul Beckermann 8:20 Number one: add interactivity to existing teacher presentations for those times where you need to directly present information. This can help keep students more engaged. You don’t want your lesson to be a passive learning event for students.

Number two: start and end lessons. The bell ringer and exit ticket options are fast and convenient ways to engage students at the beginning and end of a class period. They can also give you valuable feedback that you can use to plan your next steps.

And three: get new ideas. Whether you’re teaching a lesson for the 100th time or embarking on something new, sometimes you just want new ideas and insights. Curipod’s lesson generator can give you this jumping off point. Even if you don’t use the AI-generated suggestions as initially presented, they can still help to trigger your own creativity and idea generation. Essentially, it can be your thought partner.

Almost everywhere we look, AI is becoming infused into the tools we use, and that includes teacher planning and creation tools. Curipod is one more example of an AI-powered tool that you might want to try out.

To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit avidopenaccess.org to find more information about AI-powered tools. Check out the article collection AI in the K-12 classroom, and of course, be sure to join Rena Winston and me every Wednesday for our full length podcast Unpacking Education, where we’re joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening. Take care and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.