Nearpod Website: https://www.nearpod.com/

What does it help with?

- Student Engagement - Formative Assessment
- Ready-to-teach, highly curated content with deep pedagogy

What grade and age range?

- K-12

Is this core/supplemental/special needs/extra-curricular/professional development or what?

- Nearpod content is described as: "essential supplemental content." Teachers need content to supplement their core curriculum and the Nearpod app and resources claim to fulfill this need.

What subject, topic, what standards is it mapped to?

- ELA, Math, Social Studies, Science + General. Lessons are aligned to both state standards and Common Core standards.

What lesson time does it use?

- Lessons range from short routine activities to full class lessons.

What is the pricing model?

- Silver edition is free. Gold edition for a classroom has more features and is $12/month or $10/month if billed annually. School and District edition pricing options are based on a case by case basis depending on specific needs and requirements.

Are there services around it?

- Training on how to use Nearpod + Professional Development

What makes Nearpod unique?

- Nearpod enables teachers to create interactive lessons that engage all students during class on computers and mobile devices.
- With Nearpod, teachers can formatively assess their students with interactive activities (multiple choice, polls, short answer, quizzes, interactive whiteboard, fill in the blanks, matching pairs).
- Teachers can present multimedia material to students with (video, audio, websites, web apps).
- Nearpod connects teachers with all of their students, instantly, in real-time, creating a synchronous learning and discussion platform.
- Nearpod has a content store where teachers can access 2000 ready to teach, standards aligned lessons, created by awesome teachers and education publishers such as CK12, Learnzillion, Readworks, and Common Sense Education.
- With Nearpod, teachers can flip their classroom by launching student-paced lessons that students can view on their own time.

A description of the characteristics—how is it designed for user interface, user experience? What instructional design principles are at work here?

- The Nearpod platform enables teachers to leverage research-based best practices, relying heavily on the benefits of frequent collection of student data that is immediately actionable for the teacher. The live response student assessment tools allow for teachers to collect student data and provide feedback immediately—the most effective and actionable form of feedback. The content (lessons) facilitate whole class experiences that leverage a variety of classroom instructional techniques such as accessing prior knowledge at the beginning of lessons, objectives-aligned and standards-aligned content, checks for understanding throughout the lesson, and varied formats of engagement (discourse, reading, group work, partner work, independent tasks).

A teacher’s review:

Marilou V.
Teaches Science, Chemistry and Physics to 10th—12th grades.
Houston ISD, High School for Law & Justice
Houston, TX

“First of all I want to say that I’ve been using Nearpod for almost 2 years. I brought it into my classroom after all my students were given HP Folio notebooks as part of the district’s Power UP! Initiative. Its my go to tool to virtually replace paper and pencils. I used to use Power Point and have the students follow along. Now I deliver my class so everyone follows interactively and can do their work on their laptops as we go through a lesson.

“Nearpod makes it possible for students to ask me questions ‘online’ and a 1 on 1 discussion can be had to determine their issue. Or I can click on a students name, using our interactive whiteboard which Nearpod is projected on, and we can have a class discussion about their answers or ideas on a subject.

“It has dramatically increased student engagement. Nearpod instantly makes it possible to see who is turning in work and who is not because each student has their own logon and they turn in work digitally at the end of the lesson. Still there are some that just don’t want to do the work. But many more are involved.

“Nearpod also has a lot of ‘tools’ to make it engaging. For example students can type answers but they can also use the mouse ‘writing’ tool. All I tell them is that I at least have to be able to read it! With everything connected digitally there is no more “lost” claims, no more excuses. Big relief. Amazing time/management solution. I save a lot of time.

“As far as the students view—I would say they appreciate it. They definitely are more involved as I said, so we are getting more work done. So there is more learning per unit of time and less chitter chatter.

“I give it five stars!”

For more information at about Nearpod: https://www.nearpod.com/