Nearpod Launches a Suite of New Features, Including Highly Requested Drag & Drop Activity, To Meet Teachers’ Needs Ahead of Back-to-School

Nearpod, a teacher-centric, interactive instructional platform that gives teachers real-time insights into student learning, today announces the launch of a suite of new product features, as well as new interactive slides-based lessons, videos, and gamification and activities. This release makes teaching easier with new interactive tools, resources, and content teachers need, all in one place.

Since the pandemic, edtech has transitioned from a nice-to-have to, arguably a must-have, in classrooms across the nation and globe. During the shift from in-person to remote learning, Nearpod supported more educators than ever before, experiencing a fivefold increase in the number of teachers using its platform compared to 2019. According to a December 2020 - January 2021 Nearpod survey of 703 U.S. K-12 educators, eight in 10 teachers reported COVID-19 led them to use edtech and digital resources more. Moreover, 99% of surveyed teachers who used Nearpod during the pandemic plan to continue using the platform when they return to the physical classroom.

As educators look to create a consistent learning experience this year, whether in-person or otherwise, Nearpod continues to build features that will bridge the gap between what students have grown accustomed to and what will help them succeed this school year. Committed to supporting the evolving needs of both educators and students, Nearpod is launching:

• Drag & Drop, a formative assessment activity teachers can use to understand student progress in new ways with categorizing, sequencing, labeling, sorting, and much more, all in real-time. Additionally, teachers can choose from more than 100 pre-made activities for Drag & Drop.
• An Enriched Slide Editor, which deepens the ways educators can tailor slides within the platform, including rich text, math formulas, dynamic layers, customizable layouts, images, video, audio, and more. And with improved Immersive Reader functionality, accessibility in classrooms receives a boost overall.
• Live to Student-Paced, to allow teachers to toggle between live participation and student-paced mode, so students can work at their own pace during a lesson or finish a lesson as homework without losing existing work. 
• Student Accounts, which schools and districts can choose to enable, allows for greater lesson continuity, as teachers can seamlessly start, stop, and resume lessons. It also grants students the ability to create their own Nearpod lessons to maximize learning impact.
• An Enhanced Microsoft Teams Integration, creating a more seamless experience for teachers and students to access Nearpod lessons within Teams.

​Consistent with all previously released features, Nearpod’s newest features enable educators to monitor student progress and performance in real-time, in both Live and Student-Paced mode. This capability empowers teachers to support student learning needs and celebrate student success in the moment, in the physical classroom or when remote. 

“Taking our community’s feedback into account is a part of our DNA, and as our community has quickly grown in the past year, we’ve been inspired by their needs and visions for their ideal one-stop instructional tool,” shared Daniel Green, Vice President of Product Management. “Drag & Drop was our most requested feature, and our new Slide Editor was also highly requested, so we’re thrilled to add both new tools to our expansive suite of features in time for the new school year.” 

As part of Nearpod’s dedication to continually providing up-to-date content, the company is also adding over 500 new and updated lessons to its growing library of standards-aligned content, which features over 15,000 pre-made lessons, activities, and videos available for educators. In addition, Nearpod’s latest content release includes new Nearpod Original videos, new pre-made activities, including 500 activities in Spanish and Portuguese, and an expanded offering for EL students.
 
“We remain devoted to creating features and tools teachers want and need for their instructional design,” stated Jennie Kristoffersen, Chief Strategy Officer at Nearpod. “We’ve continuously expanded our platform’s functionality while growing our feature and content sets to uncomplicate the tech-enabled classroom. Our goal is to ensure teachers need just one solution for all their classroom technology needs as they look to enhance engagement and elevate instructional impact.” 

This release expands on Nearpod’s continued effort to help educators seamlessly integrate technology into their instruction while reducing the number of technology tools they need. Nearpod combines multiple solutions into its platform and allows teachers to gain and maintain student attention throughout instruction to create more opportunities to make learning captivating and increase student creativity.

This June, Nearpod announced its deepened partnership with Google Classroom, which further streamlines access to both products, improving the workflow for educators and students alike.  This announcement also follows on the heels of other recent additions to the platform, including features like Co-Teaching, Whiteboarding, Video and Activity Banks, Live Slide Annotation, and Interactive Video. 

To learn if Nearpod is the right solution for your classroom, school or district, visit: nearpod.com 

About Nearpod
Whether using interactive lessons, interactive videos or gamified learning, teachers get real-time insights into student learning with Nearpod. Teachers can upload their existing content and make it interactive using Nearpod’s more than 20 formative assessment and rich-media features so that all learning is active and collaborative. In addition, Nearpod’s libraries feature over 15,000 standards-aligned lessons, videos and activities created in partnership with leading publishers like Common Sense Education and Smithsonian. Nearpod’s companion platform Flocabulary engages students in K-12 standards-aligned hip-hop videos and instructional activities that increase reading comprehension through academic vocabulary exposures. Together, Nearpod and Flocabulary reach the 100 largest school districts in the US and are used by over 1.7 million educators worldwide. In March 2021, Nearpod was acquired by Renaissance, a global leader in assessment, reading and math solutions for pre-K-12 schools and districts. To learn more about Nearpod, visit www.nearpod.com. For more information about Renaissance, visit www.renaissance.com. 
 

Contact Information

Rachel Stoczko

Communications Manager

Nearpod

Contact via E-mail