The Challenge of Student Engagement
Slides are a staple of the classroom. They are excellent for organizing information and keeping a lecture on track. However, keeping students focused on a screen for forty-five minutes is difficult. Teachers often struggle to turn a passive presentation into an active conversation. Innovative ideas using ai can solve this problem by adding a layer of interactivity to your existing workflow. They allow you to transform a standard lecture into a two-way exchange without spending hours designing new materials.
There are many tools designed to help with this. You might know names like Nearpod or Peardeck. These are great tools, but they require you to build every interaction manually. Curipod is different. It uses artificial intelligence to build the interactive elements for you. It creates a bridge between your lesson plan and student devices in seconds.
What is Curipod?
Curipod is an AI-powered presentation tool. It works like a standard slide builder, but it has an intelligent assistant built in. You type in a topic, such as "The Solar System" or "The Causes of WWI," and it generates a slide deck for you.
These are not just text slides. Curipod automatically inserts interactive elements that students participate in using their own laptops or phones.
Polls: Check student understanding instantly.
Word Clouds: Visualize class opinions or vocabulary associations.
Open-Ended Questions: Collect short answers from every student.
Drawing Activities: Let students draw diagrams or timelines.
Students join the lesson with a simple code. You control the slides from the front of the room. As you advance, the content appears on their devices. When you ask a question, their answers appear on the big screen.
Why It Works: increasing the Participation Ratio
In a typical classroom discussion, the same three or four students always raise their hands. The rest of the class stays silent. This is often called a low "Participation Ratio."
Curipod fixes this issue. Because every student answers the question on their own device, you get 100% participation. Research from Edutopia suggests that digital response systems significantly increase engagement because they lower the social risk. A shy student is more likely to type an answer than to speak it out loud.
The Perfect Workflow: Vertech Academy + Curipod
Curipod is an excellent tool for displaying content. However, it relies on you to provide the direction. If you give the AI a vague topic, it will give you a vague slideshow. To get the best results, you need to feed it a high-quality pedagogical strategy.
This is where Vertech Academy fits in. You can use the Activity Helper prompt (included in the Teacher's Essential Package) to generate the creative concept. Then you use Curipod to visualize it.
Here is a workflow you can use:
Generate the Concept: Open ChatGPT and use the Vertech Activity Helper prompt. Ask it to "Create a debate topic about Artificial Intelligence that forces students to consider ethics."
Refine the Question: The Vertech prompt ensures the question is rigorous and aligned with your teaching standards.
Visualize It: Go to Curipod. Type in the debate topic you just generated. Curipod will build the voting slides and timers for you.
By combining the deep pedagogical logic of Vertech prompts with the visual power of Curipod, you ensure your lesson is both substantial and engaging.
Safety and Moderation
When you allow students to type answers that appear on the main screen, you need to be careful. A student might try to type something inappropriate.
Curipod includes AI moderation tools to help with this. It filters out bad language automatically. As a teacher, you also have full control. You can use the "Teacher View" to approve responses before they go live on the board.
Privacy: Students can join with nicknames. You do not need to collect email addresses.
Control: You control the pace. Students cannot skip ahead to the answers.
Try This Today: The 5-Minute Bell Ringer
You do not need to change your entire curriculum to try this tool. Start with a "Bell Ringer" at the start of class.
The Prompt: Use the Vertech Activity Helper (or test it on our free demo for ChatGPT or Gemini) to generate a "Hook Question" for your next lesson.
The Tool: Go to Curipod.com and click "Generate Lesson."
The Input: Paste your Hook Question into the box.
The Result: In about 30 seconds, you will have an interactive slide ready to launch.
When class starts, put the code on the board. You will see every student engage with the lesson before you even finish taking attendance.
