Our latest product updates for the upcoming back to school season meet the needs of educators and equip them with the necessary tools to deliver effective instruction and facilitate engaging learning experiences!

Teachers and administrators can log in below to start using these updates. If you’re new to Nearpod, sign up for free or schedule a call with an expert.

What’s new with Nearpod: Back to School 2023

Discover Nearpod’s latest product updates for Back to School 2023! This PDF highlights the introduction of live teacher-to-student feedback, a simplified Lesson Builder, Search Enhancements for easier lesson planning, and more. With over 22,000 high-quality lessons, videos, and activities in the extensive standards-aligned library, Nearpod equips educators with the tools to support every student’s unique needs and foster a love for learning. Teachers and administrators can log in or sign up to access these new features. Don’t miss out on these exciting updates—download the PDF now and get ready for a successful back to school season!

Visualize and support student understanding with real-time feedback and insights

We are so excited to introduce Nearpod’s live teacher-to-student feedback feature, just in time for back to school (a TOP requested feature—we mean it when we say your feedback matters and we listen)! With this new feature, teachers can provide LIVE feedback on students’ work, allowing them to intervene in the moment. Teachers can quickly identify common misconceptions or provide additional help when students need it the most, ultimately boosting student engagement and achievement.

What can you expect with live teacher-to-student feedback?

• Direct feedback on individual students’ work in drawable activities, such as Draw It, Drag & Drop, and Math Manipulatives* (math manipulatives are exclusive to the Nearpod Math Program)
• Access to a wealth of real-time insights and adjust your instruction on the spot to better support each student’s unique needs

Create engaging lessons right in Nearpod with a new, simplified Lesson Builder

In addition to live feedback, we’re debuting our NEW Lesson Builder experience. We believe teachers are the architects behind creating engaging and interactive lessons that support student learning; to better support this, we’ve completely overhauled our Lesson Builder, making it easier for teachers to create captivating and personalized lessons. With our intuitive interface, teachers can craft dynamic lessons catering to their students’ needs and learning styles.

Additionally, our extensive standards-aligned content library offers a plethora of easy-to-customize, pre-existing materials. Whether teachers prefer to start from scratch or modify existing content, Nearpod’s Lesson Builder provides the tools to create captivating lessons that captivate and inspire students.

What can you expect with the new Lesson Builder? 

• Create and build lessons with a streamlined, familiar experience 
• Quicker and easier lesson creation functionality—build, edit, and reorder slides and activities

More exciting updates!

Focus on teaching, not just searching for supplemental resources in the Nearpod library with Global Search Enhancements: 

• New search filter to easily find lessons created by specific publishers 
• New lesson counters 
• Related search term suggestions to better refine search results

The beginning of the school year is the perfect time to dive into Nearpod’s extensive standards-aligned library. Our goal is to minimize your planning time so that you can focus on teaching and engaging with your students. With over 22,000 high-quality lessons, videos, and activities, the Nearpod library is packed with ready-to-use resources.

Curious to learn more about our exceptional content and trusted partners? Discover how to find free quality lessons and teaching resources.

Seamless and secure integration with the new implementation of LTI 1.3.

• LTI 1.3 provides an optimized learning journey that combines streamlined processes, advanced security features, and enhanced user authentication

Start using these Nearpod updates now!

We hope you are as excited about these new product updates as we are. After all – your feedback fueled them! Teachers are at the center of everything we do, we’re determined to provide you the tools and resources you need so you can focus on doing more of what you love – delivering impactful instruction and positive student outcomes.

Here’s to a great back to school season — you’ve got this, and we’ve got you!

Teachers and administrators can log in below to start using these updates. If you’re new to Nearpod, sign up for free or schedule a call with an expert.

Nearpod Team

Nearpod’s award-winning platform is used by thousands of schools around the globe, transforming classroom engagement.

nearpod.com/

The post What’s new with Nearpod: Back to school 2023 appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Easier than ever to create and deliver engaging lessons right in Nearpod

Slide Editor and Toolbar

Get ready to create with our updated Slide Editor! While Nearpod is known for its interactive lessons and formative assessment tools, the ability to create, customize, and add slides is essential for developing effective instruction. Now with our Slide Editor updates, we’ve made it even easier for teachers to create engaging content without leaving Nearpod.

What’s new with the Slide Editor and Toolbar?

• Enhanced functionality, including drawing capabilities 
• Drawing, rich text, math formulas, lines, and shapes on favorite activities like Draw It, Drag & Drop, and Virtual Math Manipulatives*

*Exclusive to Nearpod Math Program

Teacher Dashboard

The Teacher Dashboard is the control center when navigating a lesson. To be effective, a dashboard must have the essential tools educators need to provide impactful instruction and give them the ability to pivot on the fly to address misconceptions. We listened to feedback from teachers like you to improve our Teacher Dashboard. Updates for Back to School might seem “small,” but the impact is huge. In the newly designed dashboard, the teacher tools have been reorganized and refreshed for a more seamless lesson delivery experience.

What’s new with Teacher Dashboard? 

• New slide carousel to easily navigate through lesson slides
• Numbered slides in the slide carousel (no more counting slides! Yay!)
• Ability to preview slide thumbnails before sharing with your class
• Easier access to activities, Brain Breaks**, Whiteboard, & Live Annotation

**Exclusive to Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program

Better insight into student understanding with updated reports

Redesigned Reports

You spoke, and we listened! Quick access to formative assessment data is crucial and allows educators to personalize instruction and identify learning gaps. For Back to School 2022, Nearpod has reimagined our Post Session Reports. This redesign includes the report summary and activity reports in addition to adding a new Student Report that displays a student’s results for each activity in the lesson.

What’s new with Post Session Reports?

• Beautiful, modern, completely reimagined reporting interface
• Improved reporting capabilities for key activities such as Time to Climb, Draw It, Open-Ended-Question, and more
• Use new insights into the most frequently missed questions and misconception trends to drive your lessons and instruction
• The new Student Report allows checking for understanding across all activities in the lesson for each student (coming Fall 2022)

Less time planning when 22,000+ lessons, videos, and activities are one click away

Enhanced Search & Enhanced Nearpod Library

Teachers’ most valuable asset is their time. The days are full, commitments are never-ending, and demands are high. Walk through the corridors of any school, and you will see teachers involved in every facet of the school day. We are improving our users’ search experience so they can access their content and launch lessons quickly. With these updates, teachers will spend less time searching and planning when 22,000+ lessons, videos, and activities are only one click away. Do more of what you love and less time searching for what you need. 

What’s new with enhanced search?

• Search the Lesson Library, Programs, and My Library at once
• Predictive suggestions that appear as you type
• Search results are organized by assets type: lesson, activity, video
• Completely redesigned filtering experience

What’s new with the Nearpod Library?

• Expanded Nearpod Library with 22,000+ total resources
  • 8,500 Interactive Lessons
  • 10,200 Interactive Videos
  • 3,300 Games and Activities

Streamlined workflow with new integrations and connections

Official launch partner for Google Classroom add-ons!

Streamlining the workflow between teachers’ most commonly used edtech tools has become more important than ever. Google recently announced its newest feature, Classroom add-ons, to simplify use and bring tools together. We’re excited to bring you the Nearpod add-on to make using these two tools easier for teachers and students.

With the new Nearpod add-on, educators can do even more within Google Classroom:

• Seamlessly assign Nearpod lessons to their entire class or individual students
• Allow students to join Nearpod lessons without a code
• View post-session reports and assign a grade

Excited about this? So are we! Take a deeper dive into learning more about the Google Classroom add-on.

The Google Classroom add-on is available for schools and districts that subscribe to Google’s Workspace for Education Teaching and Learning Upgrade or Education Plus editions. Google Classroom admin must enable Nearpod as an add-on before it is available to be used by teachers and students.

Star Assessment to Nearpod connection 

As school leaders seek to minimize the impact of disrupted learning, teachers need more support than ever to meet students where they are at. More than 80 million Star assessments are taken each year to show students’ strengths and weaknesses, but now what? Teachers don’t have the time to create unique lesson plans for every student, and even if they did, where do they find all of those materials?

The Star to Nearpod connection gives teachers insights they can act on right away by recommending high-quality Nearpod lessons, activities, or videos directly in Star. Recommendations to Nearpod resources are based on the Star assessment results of individual students, a small group, or the entire class. Without spending any additional time, teachers know where their students need help and what they can do to make the biggest impact. 

Nearpod turns Star assessment data into actionable insights for the classroom, eliminating guesswork and empowering teachers to improve learning outcomes.

This exciting new connection is now available for Star Math, Star Reading, and Start Early Literacy.

Back to School with updates made just for you

We hope you are as excited about these new product updates as we are, after all – they were fueled by your feedback! Teachers are at the center of everything we do, we’re determined to provide you the tools and resources you need so you can focus on doing more of what you love – delivering impactful instruction and positive student outcomes.

Here’s to a great Back to School season — you’ve got this, and we’ve got you!

Nearpod Team

Nearpod’s award-winning platform is used by thousands of schools around the globe, transforming classroom engagement.

nearpod.com/

The post What’s new with Nearpod: Back to School 2022 appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Create even more impactful instruction with Nearpod

As a teacher, you know how powerful it is when you have an incredibly engaging lesson or classroom discussion. Students are energized, motivated, and excited to learn more which boosts student achievement and outcomes. Great lessons empower classrooms and bring in opportunities to build community, master a new academic concept, and give teachers feedback on exactly where students may need additional support or enrichment. However, creating truly effective lessons that accomplish all of these things at once can be challenging. Many teachers struggle to ensure that every student has a voice in a lesson or classroom discussion. Others may grapple with creating engaging lessons that are also meaningful and purposefully aligned with lesson and curriculum objectives. Students struggle to stay motivated to learn in less engaging or empowering lessons.

According to the EdWeek Research Center students and teachers surveyed found that student motivation and morale are lower now than they were prior to the pandemic (2021). 

50%  of students surveyed self-reported less motivation, and 49% reported a lower morale. 

The teachers surveyed on the same student motivation and morale reported that 87% of students were less motivated and 82% had even lower morale compared to before the pandemic. 
To help solve the challenges of low student engagement and morale, we’re excited to announce new Collaborate Board features and Time to Climb enhancements. These incredible updates will make it easier than ever for teachers to re-engage their students and help students feel heard, included, and empowered in the classroom.

1. Bring student-centered discussions into Nearpod with Collaborate Board’s newest features

As part of supporting student engagement and impactful instruction, we are introducing a new and reimagined Collaborate Board that encourages student-centered discussions. This interactive discussion board allows for 100% student participation as well as provides students to engage with multiple and diverse perspectives.

With these latest updates, Collaborate Board offers:

• New themes and backgrounds
• Ability to add more reference media 
• New media options for students’ posts
• Ability for students to reply to posts*
• Ability for teachers to organize posts into columns*

*Available in a School/District Premium Plus license only

With Nearpod’s reference media in Collaborate Board, teachers can now scaffold and differentiate for student needs by allowing them to access images, PDFs, web content, videos, or audio files during a Collaborate Board discussion.

Collaborate Board’s new media options enable students to add videos, audio recordings, and GIFs to their Collaborate board responses in addition to text and images.

For school and district users with a Premium Plus license, teachers will also have the ability to sort student responses into columns so students can organize their ideas. Additionally, Premium Plus users can allow students to thread replies to posts on a Collaborate Board, ensuring classroom discussions are student-centered and give students the opportunity to learn and add to each others’ contributions, providing a platform for true collaboration and communication.

2. Transform quizzes into instructional moments with new Time to Climb enhancements

Using games to supplement learning experiences in the classroom is a wonderful way to re-engage students. With the latest updates to Time to Climb, teachers will be able to turn those fun, gamified moments into instructional opportunities.

Time to Climb is a teacher favorite for gamified quizzes in the Nearpod platform. In this gamified multiple-choice quiz, students answer questions correctly and quickly to race to the top of a mountain. 

With these new enhancements, Time to Climb options increase to bring you:

• New themes
• Multiple correct answers
• Volume controls
• Pausing between questions
• All new teacher data on the dashboard

New themes available in Time to Climb include beach, carnival, and sports adding to the existing underwater, space, mountain, and seasonal themes already included. These new themes will be available all year long, while our Valentine’s, Halloween, and Winter Holiday themes will continue to be accessible during these holiday time frames.

Time to Climb users will now be able to create questions with multiple correct answers. Additionally, we know many teachers asked for more volume controls, which are now available. Both the teacher and student can access volume controls for smoother game play both in person and in virtual classrooms.

 Two new features in Time to Climb are the ability to pause between questions and the ability to view data on student understanding in the Teacher Dashboard as students are playing. With the new capability to pause and student data,  these features allow teachers to strengthen instructions and address any student misconceptions. Teachers can guide their instruction while engaging students and access additional data insights on every quiz question.

3. Save time creating lessons, videos, and activities with a growing library of standards-aligned resources

The support for teachers continues in how you prepare and how you teach. Our library of resources continues to expand, providing more options to meet the specific learning needs of students. Once you have chosen or built your lesson we have also made it easier to share that lesson with students with a new Teacher Dashboard.

 We know that lesson resources are plentiful across the web, but we want to make searching and using quality lessons easier. The Nearpod lesson library has lessons that support differentiation, provides resources to fill in gaps in the core learning and meet the interests of students in the classroom. The new lesson, videos and activities add up to more time working with students and less time searching the web. Our latest release of new lessons, videos, and activities includes:

• 500+ NEW standards-aligned premade Drag & Drop activities
• 5000+ NEW standards-aligned premade interactive videos
• 700+ NEW lessons for subjects, current events, and racial & social justice offerings

4. Access student responses in real-time and more with the new Teacher Dashboard

The update to the Teacher Dashboard in a Live lesson is one of those subtle but powerful changes. Everything you have always loved is still there, just in perhaps a slightly different spot, plus everything you didn’t even know you wanted!

The Teacher Dashboard includes a new Menu that keeps your key teacher tools handy but out of the way, such as the option to add an activity on the fly or the option to send your post-session report to your email. But the best tool in that Menu is the Presentation option. This button opens a student view of the Nearpod lesson in a new window.  This window can quickly be pushed to another screen for easy viewing from the front of the room leaving the teacher screen private for you. 

Quickly and easily access the Whiteboard option from the Teacher Dashboard, allowing you to slide a blank screen in front of your lesson on student devices for an impromptu example or additional explanation. Close it when you are done and move on with the lesson.

But the favorite update only appears when you need it! When you include an Open Ended Question, Matching Pairs, Draw It, Poll, or Quiz in your lesson you will see the new Student Teacher toggle button. The Activity opens in student view automatically, giving you the option to model or provide instructions. Then you can click Teacher to toggle to quickly see student responses. Need to go back and discuss part of the Activity, toggle back to Student. Modeling for students has never been easier!

We’re so excited to see you put these updates to use with your students! Remember to stay up to date with our Nearpod Updates blog post to see what’s new biweekly. We’re always releasing new enhancements, features, lessons, and activities to support you and your students.

Using games to supplement learning experiences in the classroom is a wonderful way to re-engage students. With the latest updates to Time to Climb, teachers will be able to turn those fun, gamified moments into instructional opportunities.

Nearpod Team

Nearpod’s award-winning platform is used by thousands of schools around the globe, transforming classroom engagement.

nearpod.com/

The post What’s new with Nearpod: February 2022 appeared first on Nearpod Blog.