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Monday, May 4, 2020

Adding Audio to Pear Deck Google Slides Activities

Pear Deck is an awesome add-on for Google Slides that allows you to add interactive elements to your slideshows.When you run the slideshow through the Pear Deck add-on the students can join the presentation with a code and follow along slide by slide. As they do, the students can respond to interactive questions including multiple choice, text response, numeric response, drawing, and drag and drop. And all of these responses are collected for you as the teacher.

Recently Pear Deck got even better with a new feature that allows you to add recorded or uploaded audio to the activity! This is especially helpful if you are running the Pear Deck activity as a student paced lesson, so the students can hear you speaking to give instructions, read content aloud, provide a personal connection, and more.

To help explain this I have recorded a short 7-minute video that covers all the steps. See below to access that.

If you would like to learn more, I recorded a free 1-hour webinar on "Remote Learning & Pear Deck" where I went over the fundamentals of Pear Deck for asynchronous learning, shared best practices, highlighted favorite features, and answered lots of questions. You can see the recorded video at:
www.controlaltachieve.com/2020/05/peardeck-webinar.html


Tutorial Video (7 minutes)

Here is my quick 7-minute video on how to add audio to a Pear Deck Google Slides activity.




Directions

First we will assume we already have the Pear Deck add-on installed, and we have created our Google Slideshow, and we have added some Pear Deck interactive questions. If needed, you can get all the details on the basics for using Pear Deck at www.controlaltachieve.com/peardeck

When you are ready to add audio to the Pear Deck activity, here is how you do it:
  • In the Pear Deck add-on panel, click the button for "Add Audio to Slide".


  • This will open a window where you can record or upload your audio.


  • If you click the "Record" button, the audio will start recording automatically.
  • You can click the "Pause" button when you are done.
  • If you messed up you can click the "Delete" option to try again.
  • If you want to record more, just click "Resume"
  • When you are all done, click "Save".


  • If you click the "Upload" button instead, you can select an MP3 audio file from your computer to upload.
  • Either way you now click the play button to hear your recording and make sure everything sounds good.
  • If not, you can always click "Delete" and try again. 
  • Otherwise, click "Add Audio to Slide".


  • The recorded audio will now be added to the slide as a little "Audio included" rectangle in the top right corner.
  • Feel free to move the audio around the slide, or make it bigger or smaller
  • You can even drag the audio off the side of the slide and it will still work fine.
  • If later on you decide you need to delete or replace the audio, you can just click the "Add Audio to Slide" button again, and now you can delete the audio, and record a new version if you want.



You can continue recording or uploading audio to as many slides in the presentation as you want. When you are finished, we can now take a look at what the student experience will look like.
  • You will start the lesson as normal by clicking "Start Lesson" at the top of the Pear Deck add-on panel.
  • If you are presenting this live to your students, either in person or in a Google Meet video conference, you would choose the option for "Instructor-Paced Activity".
  • However if you want your students to work through the lesson on their own, you would choose "Student-Paced Activity".


  • You can now give your students the join code which they can enter at joinpd.com
  • Or you can copy the join link by clicking "Give Students A Link" and paste this link into Google Classroom or an email or whatever way you wish to provide the link to your students.


  • After the student has joined the Pear Deck activity, as they work through the slideshow, for any slide that you added audio, they will see a headphones icon in the bottom right corner.
  • The student can simply click on that icon and click the play button to hear the recorded or uploaded audio.


The ability to add audio to a Pear Deck Google slideshow is a great way to make the activity more engaging for your students. You can connect with your students with an encouraging message, or provide instruction, or explain directions. You could even use this feature to read a story to your students and then use Pear Deck to collect feedback and answers to questions. And for every student, adding the optional audio recordings increases accessibility.


Post by Eric Curts. Connect with me on Twitter at twitter.com/ericcurts

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