Community reviews for Nearpod

Nearpod is one of my all-time favorite teaching tools based upon the numerous ways it can be used and integrated into instruction. It allows students the ability to gain knowledge but also the opportunity to create new knowledge and demonstrate learning in multiple ways. Nearpod's crew is very user-responsive and is continually making adjustments to improve upon an already incredible tool.

Nearpod has some limitations. The free version is limited in space, so the gold version is almost necessary. When you push out a website, students can interact with it, but when you go to the next slide (maybe for an open-ended question or brief quiz), the link disappears. This is nice b/c students can't keep messing around on sites, but if they need to look back to do the activity you do on the next slide, that site is gone. Finally, if you want fancy fonts, backgrounds, etc. you need to create your slides first in Keynote or PowerPoint and then import them in. Those limitations don't impact the final product. Nearpod allows students to be more present in a presentation, and that's what's most important.

Overall, this is one of my favorite classroom tools for presenting and assessing. Students become active participants in their education while teachers get valuable feedback on student learning. This is certainly a plus. I have found this tool extremely helpful in an one-to-one teaching and learning environment.

I love Nearpod so much I'm one of their Nearpod Pionears! It's a great way to reach all types of learners and is a great app if you are looking for an additional tool to add to your BYOD toolkit! It helps keep students on task, and it puts teachers at ease with managing student off-task behavior. It's a great way to engage all students since you can embed questions, polls, draw it, PDFs, and videos! I like to create my own presentations, but I've also used some of the common-core aligned content available on the site by teachers. Some of the content costs but some is free. There is content for all grade levels: Pre-Kindergarten to Seniors in high school. It's a free app but there are additional features that are available with a premium paid account. The ability to share the complete Nearpod Presentation (NPP), the homework link, is only available with the paid account.

Nearpod is awesome! If you have a premade PowerPoint, it's very easy to insert your lesson into the Nearpod website, then insert assessment checkpoint slides throughout. Even creating lessons from scratch, like my geography lesson on continents, proved relatively easy to complete. Sharing lessons through Nearpod with other teachers has been quirky in the past, but hopefully that will be a smoother process with future app updates. I believe Nearpod is an excellent choice when merging instruction and assessment into one lesson.

I think Nearpod is a wonderful vehicle to engage students in active class participation. Pre-made Nearpod presentations are easy to edit/adjust to meet the needs of each particular class. Creating Nearpod presentations from scratch (or loading pages from existing non-Nearpod files) is a bit cumbersome. I actually grew frustrated with how time consuming it became, so I chose to stop attempting to create my own and stuck with using pre-created presentations. It is great that Nearpod can be used on both tablets (via the app) or a PC. This makes accessible by such a vast audience. Nearpod also has a reports feature, in which you can take the 'real-time data' you receive during a class session and download reports to analyze that data to help drive upcoming instruction. Nearpod does have paid upgrades, which allow the user great access to a session, more storage, and enhanced reporting capabilities.

I really love the fact that Neapod allows you to import already-created PowerPoints so you don't have to create from scratch. This is a definite time-saver. Being able to add a variety of interactions within a normal PowerPoint is a huge plus when it comes to gauging the learning that is going on in the classroom. Oftentimes when a teacher lectures from a PowerPoint, there are no "checks" throughout that presentation to determine if the students get it. With Nearpod, you can do that. Another pro to using Nearpod is the fact that you can monitor which students are checked in and which have checked out. This is a major plus in the classroom management piece of technology integration. With Nearpod, you don't have to worry about it only being available on certain mobile devices. It does work across mobile platforms while also working on regular computers as long as you have internet access. This is plus for any school working with BYOD. I highly recommend this application as it's one of my top 10 applications I recommend to teachers.

The free version would be a good tool for anyone that has small classes. I was able to use all of the features with the free version. I like that I was able to scroll through all student responses quickly and could show student responses to the whole class easily. If you have large classes you would need to purchase the upgrade.

I love the immediate feedback and the immediate engagement for students. It gets my class going and the students are excited to begin the lesson. I hope to expand my use of this product in the very near future. Many students have the capabilities of using the product with the diverse platforms it uses. Unfortunately, changing and creating lessons is not as user friendly as it could be.

Great tool, but can become solely direct instruction easily depending on how the teacher creates the presentation. I encourage the use of student activities in the lesson.