How and when did Nearpod form?

Nearpod first released into the App Store on May 10th, 2012. We worked in "private beta" with a handful of schools and teachers for many months before our official launch.

 

 

Was Nearpod your first project?

No. The team behind Nearpod has been involved with interactive content for a while.

 

 

Did you expect Nearpod to have made such an impact so quickly?

We knew that the use case was quite powerful because we had done extensive beta pilots in classrooms before releasing it in the appstore. But overall we very pleasantly surprised by the extremely positive reaction and feedback we've received from the education community.

 

 

What features of Nearpod do you think make it particularly useful in the classroom?

Real-time, immediate feedback on student performance.

Customizability empowers educators to create brilliant presentations that include many assessment tools. There are several interactive options in the platform, so each Nearpod presentation can be a unique experience. 

 

 

How hard is it to develop and evolve the app to keep it cutting edge?

From a functional stand-point, It takes listening to educators in order to understand their needs, going to classrooms, reaching out for feedback, etc. 

 

From a technology stand-point, mobile OS are still fairly new platforms which are constantly evolving. For example, each new iOS version poses new challenges to developers and offers new features, so we need to be constantly researching to be sure that our apps stay up to date. 

 

 

What can users expect from the next update of Nearpod?

There's a lot coming in our roadmap. In the short term, we're bringing enhancements on current features (stay tuned for an enhanced new Draw-it feature) and we're introducing a few new ones, particularly a more complete web-app.    

 

We've also worked extensively on improving the overall performance of the platform to make it even faster and more reliable.

 

Thanks for taking the time to speak with us Edward.

 

For more information on Nearpod, visit the official site.

FACETIME: Edward Zelarayan