Choose between Nearpod and Pear Deck
Key Nearpod Features Explained
Polls - Polls allow teachers to create a question to pose to the whole class during a presentation and then show the results to the whole class. Polls, like other activities in NearPod, can include a reference photo, PDF, video, audio, or website.
Draw It - This feature allows students to draw, highlight, insert pictures, and insert text, all on top of each other. Teachers can also include a background image for students to draw, write, or highlight on top of.
Collaborations - This feature has a teacher create a prompt similar to an open question. The unique feature of this activity is that it allows the teacher to approve student answers to be shown to the whole class on a bulletin board type display on the screen. Students can include both text and images in their responses and other students can like their responses similar to on social media.
Matching Pairs - In this activity, the teacher creates pairs of items that can be images, text or both. When activated, students see the full list of all possible tiles/options and match them together. When they make a correct match, those tiles are eliminated. Just as in other activities, teachers can include a prompt or directions at the top of the activity.
Quizzes - While quizzes only feature multiple choice questions, they can be easily inserted into a presentation without requiring students to move to a new website. Also now in beta testing, quiz questions can include a reference photo, PDF, video, audio, or website. When creating questions, teachers can decide to have one or multiple correct answers possible. When all students are finished with the quiz, the teacher can receive a report of the responses as part of a more general report od the whole presentation session.
Open-Ended Questions - Teacher writes prompt for students to read and respond to with an unlimited space and an unlimited number of characters. A range of math symbols are available for both the teacher prompt and student responses. These include angle symbols, pi, a degree symbol, tan and cosign, root symbols and exponents, Greek letters, less than, not equal to, and less than or equal to, function symbols such as parentheses and brackets, and many more. A teacher can also include a supporting video, photo, audio file, PDF, or web content.
Fill-In-The-Blanks - When creating this activity, a teacher types out a sentence or paragraph. Then in the second step, they click on words that they’d like to be left blank. When the activity comes up in the presentation, students see the paragraph or sentences with blank boxes replacing the words that the teacher has chosen. They also see a word bank of words to drag into the sentence or paragraph.
Field Trip Powered by 360cities - This feature that is currently in beta testing on NearPod allows teachers to take their students on a virtual field trip from within a NearPod presentation. When activated, each student’s device will display a 3D VR experience of a designated location. While immersed in the experience, students can move around and spin their device to view different areas of the location. Hundreds of cities are available for exploration and only a click away!
Session Reports - Session reports allow a teacher to review all data collected during a particular NearPod session. This report includes results from quizzes, polls, open-ended questions, draw-it activities, matching pair activities, and collaborations. The report gives summaries of each of these but also allows the teacher to dive deeper and explore each individual student’s responses. These reports are shareable through email and downloadable in PDF and CSV formats for easy reference after the fact.
Explore the Library - Found as a separate tab on the NearPod website, the Explore library offers teachers a full library of searchable NearPod presentations. Filtering can be used to find presentations for specific grade levels, subject areas, or resource types such as VR, PD, or assessments. A separate filter tab also allows teachers to find presentations based on what standard(s) they are currently teaching. The Explore tab also offers a separate district library and as well as a school library for teachers to share privately what they are using in their classrooms.
Student Pacing - The student pacing feature allows teachers and students the flexibility of both synchronous and asynchronous learning. With student pacing turned on, students move through an assigned NearPod presentation at whatever pace works best for them and their learning. While some students may move quickly through a presentation, others might take their time to review the information a little more thoroughly. Teachers have the ability to share out student-paced presentations through email, Google Classroom, social media, the Remind app, sending a link, or embedding the presentation. Also now in beta testing, teachers can choose how long students can access the presentation by adjusting the expiration of the link provided.