Keynote Interactivity (and my 200th post)

When I talked with teachers about Nearpod last week, there was a teacher at the highschool who really wants to keep his animations within Keynote while having the interactivity like Nearpod. I told him that I'd look into it to see what was possible.

Short story: I'm not having any luck at all.


Long story: The solutions that I found relating to interactivity with Keynotes was the old hyperlinks on slides trick. But that isn't at all like what you can achieve with Nearpod. I also haven't been able to find any type of extensions or plugins for Keynote that would give it the functionality he's looking for.

The only solution that I remotely came up with was using Socrative or another response system type tool and then use it in the background as you do your presentation. If you have an iPad then this isn't THAT bad since you can send out the questions through it and then use your laptop to show the presentation itself. But it can be overwhelming managing the two, so it may not work for everyone. And it won't get you the same level of interactivity as Nearpod nor will it push the presentation on to the student devices like Nearpod does. But, if you are hooked on your Keynote, then it may be your only option.

In the end, really think about how important it is to have things like animations in the first place. If you have a LOT of information on a slide and you are using animations to reduce the content kids can see then may you are better off simplifying the slide to be more minimalistic or split the slide into multiples. If the other features of Nearpod appeal to you and lack of animation is the ONE thing that is holding up then you may discover it's not as important to have the animations as you think it is.

On that note, if you are using Nearpod, please keep me in the loop as to how it is going and if you are finding the upgrade to be justifiable. I can work with technology to see if we can make magic happen for you.