Pear Deck allows for live, interactive presentations. The instructor would create the slides, project them on the screen, and then give the students a link and password to join the presentation session. The slide creation part of Pear Deck is like a very limited version of Power Point. The free edition allows one to make a normal slide with title and text, video, list, or image. One can also choose between a free response slide and a multiple choice slide. With each of these, the presenter's view shows the slide with the question. Depending on the type of question chosen, the student view would show the space for students to respond or the choices for the multiple choice question.

What did it enable you to do? What did it preclude you from doing?
Pear Deck allowed me to create slides for my notes. I attempted to copy and paste my notes into the slides, but they did not handle chunks of text well. I ended up trying each type of slide that was available in the free version. I created a basic text slide, list slide, response question slide, and mutliple choice slide. I thought the slide options and editing were very limited. I wanted to be able to have text and images on slides, but I was unable to do this. It was not effective for note-taking because it was so limited. I can see how this could be useful in K-12 classes where each student has access to a computer. This allows students to answer questions during the presentation and (hopefully) remained engaged throughout the presentation. I do not think that this program allowed me to adequately engage the text for this week or adequately display my notes. I think the only effective presentation would have been the creation of 10-15 list slides.

Had you used it before? How difficult was it to learn?
I had never used or heard of Pear Deck before. However, it connects with Google Drive and had very basic editing features, so anyone who has every used PowerPoint or Google Drive would have no trouble using it. I did have trouble downloading the program. I wanted to download the entire file, but it only downloads to Google Drive. Once in Google Drive, it can only be viewed via the Pear Deck application in Goolge Drive. It limits where and how the program can be used. This was difficult to navigate at first. I would have concerns about sharing things created here. Unless you are broadcasting this to a class, it is difficult to share. Below, I provided the link to join and the password However, I am unsure if students can log into the session and view the presentation if the instructor is not broadcasting the presentation.

https://peardeck.com/join
Student Code: gdzhv
(I also loaded a copy of the presentation to the class shared folder. It's labeled Chvonne Notes NL Chapter 3 Pear Deck)

What type  of assignment might you have a student use this technology with?
I honestly would not use this for any college level assignment. If I had to use Pear Deck, I would consider using it with a developmental class that is working on sentences, grammar, or basic paragraph development. I could create short response and multiple choice slides with different grammar and sentence exercises. I'm not sure if students answers are anonymous. If the answers are anonymous, this is a good way for students to answer questions without fear of being wrong and embarrassed. I could also see this working for paragraphing. I could provide several sentences and the students could work on developing topic sentences or transitions. My main concern would be that the technology does not seem to be made for asynchronous interaction, so I would have to use it in a class with computers.