How to Use Nearpod: Easier Than You Think

As an English teacher who is still in the learning stage, I often wonder what we mean by ‘interaction’. Is it a few students raising their hands frequently in the classroom? Is it an answer that is barely squeezed out after the teacher has called out the names of the students? Or is it a state of genuine participation and expression?

Before I came across Nearpod, interaction was more of an ideal state for me. But Nearpod opened my eyes to its practical possibilities. It doesn't require flashy technical thresholds, nor does it emphasise flashy interface design, but it can provide real and visible classroom feedback. Nearpod is not just an assistive tool, but a structured platform that can go deeper into the design of teaching and learning. It not only helps students to express themselves, but also helps teachers to see the teaching process itself.

Today, I would like to talk about Nearpod in four ways:

• How to use Nearpod
• Strengths and Limits: Interaction Has Two Sides
• Application Scenarios
• Comparing Curipod and Nearpod

How to use Nearpod

The interface of Nearpod is very user-friendly. If a teacher knows how to use PowerPoint or Google Slides, they can learn Nearpod quickly. The basic function is to create an interactive slide lesson. Teachers can add different types of activities on each page.

You can either start a new lesson directly in Nearpod or upload your existing PPT file. But honestly, I found that uploading my PPT into Nearpod caused a lot of formatting problems. The slides looked very different and required a lot of fixing.

On the right is my original PPT, and look how badly it got imported into Nearpod!

Later, I found a YouTube video showing how to embed Nearpod into Google Slides. It looked useful, but I was not using Google Slides at that time, so I couldn’t try it. However, if other teachers are using Google Slides, they might find that method helpful.

Besides creating your own PPT lessons, Nearpod also has a large library of ready-made lessons on various topics. Teachers can add them to their own lesson collections.

During class, teachers can choose "Live Participation" mode to control the pace. Or they can choose "Student-Paced" mode, which allows students to complete the lesson on their own. This is useful both for classroom teaching and for after-class review.

At the end of this blog, I've put up a student-paced version of the demo piece, which you're welcome to experience!

What surprised me most is that teachers can see students’ answers in real time. For example, I asked my students to write a sentence using the structure "be going to do." After they submitted, I could quickly see who understood and who made mistakes. This is much faster and more accurate than asking students to raise their hands.

When I tried to recreate the structure of my original PPT in Nearpod, I noticed both pros and cons.

In PowerPoint, it is easy to build logical structure and insert visual elements like charts and tables. You can choose many layouts directly. But in Nearpod, it is harder to make content look the same. There are fewer design tools. If you want to use tables or complex visuals, you may need to design them first in PPT, then take a screenshot and upload it to Nearpod.

Still, Nearpod's strong interactive functions cannot be ignored. As I mentioned earlier, Nearpod offers many activity types. When creating a new slide, you can choose from "Create" and "Interactive" under the Media category, or from "Quizzes & Games" and "Discussions" under Activities. In my demo lesson, I tried all of them and compared them with PPT. In terms of interaction, Nearpod is much easier to use.

For example, I once made a matching activity in PPT, asking students to connect words and pictures. But because there were too many items on one slide, it became crowded and hard to follow. The students looked confused.

In Nearpod, the same task was easier. I used the built-in Matching Pairs activity. I uploaded pictures and typed in words. Students could do the task on their own. It was more fun and more organised. For me as a teacher, it saved time. For students, it turned a boring matching task into an interactive game.

The left side is edit mode, the right side is student mode

In terms of difficulty of use, teachers who already use PPT will find Nearpod easy to learn. If you want to study it more deeply, I recommend this YouTube video:

As for devices, the good news is that Nearpod supports almost all major devices. It works on phones, tablets, and computers. Students just need to enter a code or click a link. They don’t need to download an app or create an account. This is very helpful for classrooms where students are not allowed to install new apps.

Strengths and Limits: Interaction Has Two Sides

💖Strength 1: Real participation from all students

The biggest strength of Nearpod is that it gives even quiet students a way to take part. For example, you can add an open-ended question to your slide. Students can type their answers. For those who don’t like speaking in class, this is a safer way to express ideas. Also, by default, answers are anonymous, so students don’t feel pressure.

More responses make teachers feel encouraged too. When I see many answers submitted, I feel more motivated to keep going. It creates a win-win situation.

💖Strength 2: Instant feedback for better adjustment

Each student answer is visible in real time. Teachers can quickly spot misunderstanding and react. Suppose I need to explain ‘relative clauses’ and set a fill-in-the-blank question when checking students' mastery: 

"The man ___ is talking to my teacher is my uncle."

When students confuse the usage of "who" and "which", I can immediately find out and remedy the situation by explaining the difference between the two in time. This kind of rapid response based on students' real feedback is difficult to do in traditional teaching. It can greatly improve the flexibility and effectiveness of teaching content.

💖Strength 3: All resources in one place

Nearpod lets you put reading texts, vocabulary practice, listening videos, and class discussions into one single lesson. Students don’t need to jump between platforms.

From my own experience, when using PowerPoint alone, it takes more time and effort to link resources. I introduced Tekhnologic in one of my earlier blog posts as a site with good PPT game templates. But even with ready templates, teachers still need to spend lots of time setting them up. If you press the wrong button, everything might stop working.

If you're interested in Tekhnologic, check my Kahoot blog post. Go to the last section "Other useful material: PowerPoint games".

By contrast, Nearpod offers one stable platform. Teachers with less technical skills will feel more confident.

💔Limit 1: Depends heavily on devices

Nearpod needs every student to have a phone, tablet, or computer. In many Chinese public schools, students are not allowed to use mobile phones at all. Some schools even punish students if they are caught using devices. This makes Nearpod hard to use in those situations.

Even when devices are allowed, weak WiFi can still cause trouble. 

💔Limit 2: More interaction does not always mean deeper thinking

Nearpod does create a sense of interactivity, and its functionality simply encourages users to do so, but if the tasks are poorly designed and students just mechanically click on the options, the interaction will be a formality.

I felt this acutely when I first designed, because it was so convenient to create interactive activities that I might accidentally insert too many multiple choice questions, open-ended questions, drawing activities, and so on. In this way, students may get distracted or even not take some parts seriously. Therefore, I think interactive design is also an art, which needs to have a moderate rhythm and a sense of purpose, otherwise it is a "high-calorie, low-nutrition" teaching experience.

Application Scenarios

Although I don't have much teaching experience yet, I've come up with a few possible scenarios of Nearpod's use in English language teaching as far as I can, and I hope to throw some light on them as an inspiration. I also hope that teachers who have experience in using Nearpod can share their experiences with me in the comments section!

1. Grammar introduction and mini quizzes

Grammar can be one of the hardest parts to teach. Nearpod can make it easier. I like to start with a short reading or video. Then I add some questions to help students understand the meaning first. After that, we focus on the grammar form. This helps students notice the structure more naturally. It also makes the class more active.

I've tried a similar lesson structure with good results, and I think it will work even better after Nearpod upgrades the presentation of the interactive activities.

2. Listening practice and comprehension checks

Nearpod lets you upload a video and stop it to ask questions. I can use this with a BBC Learning English video. After listening/watching the video, I can set several pause points with vocabulary and meaning questions. This method works better than playing the whole video and asking questions at the end. Students may stay focused longer.

3. Homework and review

You can set a lesson as "Student-Paced". Students can do it at home. Nearpod records their answers. Teachers can see who needs more help. This is great for individual support. For example, you can do a listening task in class and assign extra practice using Nearpod as homework. This way, students get both class input and personal review.

4. Multimodal vocabulary teaching

I think that vocabulary explanation is also an important element in English teaching. When teaching abstract vocabulary (e.g. emotion-related words), I can insert pictures and videos in Nearpod and ask students to write down their associations on the Collaborative Board. This provides both visual support and verbal output, as well as effective collection of student feedback without the need for the teacher to name them one by one and write them on the board, which must be very convenient and quick. 

However, compared to Nearpod, I think some collaborative tools may perform better for this teaching task, such as Stormboard. my blog post A First Look at Tricider and Stormboard introduces two kinds of collaborative tools for interested teachers. Click on the links, you can read them to get a better understanding of the Tricider and Stormboard!.

Comparing Curipod and Nearpod

I've introduced Curipod in my previous blog post, and while learning how to use Nearpod, I realised that their functions are actually somewhat similar, but after careful consideration, I think there is actually a clear difference between their positioning and the way they are used. 

Deciding which platform to use is really just a matter of asking yourself two questions:

1. Do you place more emphasis on speed or control of direction?

A. Nearpod

If you've decided to prepare a class that is very relevant to your students, you want to be able to design every slide by hand, and you want to be able to collect data from your students, then Nearpod is definitely the best choice for you.

Nearpod is more suitable for classrooms that require high interactivity and control of the teaching process. It allows teachers to design each slide page themselves, insert rich activities, and view student feedback data in real time to facilitate teaching assessment.

B. Curipod

Are you feeling pressed for time and running out of ideas, while at the same time wanting an inspiring template with lots of interactive activities? Go ahead and use Curipod! It's like an AI assistant that helps you prepare your lessons quickly. Simply type in a topic or question and it generates a full set of slides in seconds, including interactive questions, polls, open discussions and other activities. 

It's a great way to save teachers' preparation time, especially if they're pressed for time or want to experiment with creative classroom design. However, precisely because it is automatically generated by AI, Curipod's content sometimes may not be completely tailored to teaching needs, and teachers often need to make additions and modifications according to the actual situation.

2. Do you need a very diverse type of interaction, or a more considered one?

A. Nearpod

In terms of interactive features, Nearpod offers a wider variety of more detailed activities, which are suitable for building a complete listening, speaking, reading and writing practice session in one lesson. In addition, Nearpod supports stronger student data tracking.

B. Curipod

Curipod's interactive features are mainly polling, quizzing and brainstorming, which are more suitable for stimulating students' thinking, guiding discussions or conducting introductory activities. And it is more focused on immediate interaction, the data recording and analysis capabilities are relatively weak.

When you are hesitating between the two platforms, please ask yourself these two questions. I believe you will get the answer soon! 

There is not much difference between the functions and operability of the two. The most important thing is how do you want to use it? What is your purpose? What are your needs? Personally, I prefer Nearpod. Using Curipod will limit my thinking to a certain extent, but when time is urgent and there is no inspiration, why not give it a try?

After learning many new tools this semester, I believe that teaching design always comes before tools, but the right tools can amplify the power of instructional design.

The right tools help us do better, but they do not create goals for us.

Nearpod is not magic. It doesn’t give you creative ideas or teaching inspiration. But it does offer interactive templates, organise student responses, and turn lectures into conversations.

I think Nearpod is best for teachers who already have clear goals. If you know what you want to teach and you want students to take part, Nearpod can be a helpful partner. I will continue using it and keep thinking about how to improve my lessons. Because in the end, it is not Nearpod that changes the classroom. It is me. I choose to put students at the centre.

All tools have pros and cons. If we want the tool to really support learning, we need to make up for its weaknesses with our own thinking and planning.

If you want to try my demo lesson from the student view, please use the code RHALX after entering Nearpod to join. Looking forward to your comments and feedback!

Nearpod: https://nearpod.com/