Pear Deck is an interactive presentation tool used to actively engage students at all levels of instruction in individual and social learning. Teachers create presentations using their Google Drive accounts. Students log into the presentation with unique access codes and interact with a variety of questions, objective and open-ended. Questions can be short answers, multiple choice, filling the gap, matching, drag items, etc. and teachers can monitor individual student and whole-class progress.

This tool engages students and makes each one of them accountable for their learning. It leads to active participation and promotes fluency in French and Spanish through activities and/or discussion in class, as opposed to passively listening to the teachers. When a question is posed, ALL students are expected to answer, providing a great opportunity to avert misconceptions or areas of confusion.

More importantly, this tool provides a safe space to all students: it promotes higher-order and difficult-to-answer questions in the classroom. Typically, only a handful of the most outspoken students manage or dare to tackle these questions orally. With Peardeck, I can privately comment on a student's response, highlight a specific student response, toggle between responses, or share to the class all student responses if appropriate. Student responses are anonymous to everyone except to the original responder and the teacher, which helps preserve everyone’s integrity.