Nearpod Launches Time to Climb, an Interactive Game That Boosts Student Engagement and Makes Learning Fun

Nearpod, the most comprehensive Student Engagement Platform for K-12 teachers, today launched Time to Climb, a new game-based activity that allows students to compete across various subjects through interactive visualizations to assess comprehension and increase engagement in the classroom. 

Time to Climb, the platform’s introduction of game-based activities to its lessons, is designed to ignite friendly competition and interactivity in the classroom while instantly assessing students’ understanding. The activity, which can be embedded in any lesson, asks students to answer multiple choice questions against the clock in a race to the top of a mountain, visualizing their progress and understanding through interactive simulations. At the end of the game, the top three winners are presented with fanfare, bringing friendly competition into the classroom. Additionally, teachers are given access to post-session reports on each students’ performance, allowing them to get a full picture of their class’ comprehension in real-time. 

“Student engagement is one of the most important measurements of public school effectiveness, so we are committed to equipping teachers and classrooms with the right tools to activate excitement in every type of learner,” said Guido Kovalskys, Nearpod co-founder and CEO. “Time to Climb is a new way for teachers to create fun and friendly competition amongst classmates while empowering educators to fuel their students’ passion for learning.”

Time to Climb is seamlessly integrated into any existing Nearpod lesson, allowing any topic or subject to be instantly gamified. The teacher will see a dashboard with the students’ ranking, as well as a view of the mountain as the students progress towards the top and students can see the class rankings on the teacher view. Teachers can integrate any of the 25 pre-made offerings with existing Nearpod-created lessons or develop their own with tailored questions to fit their students’ needs. Time to Climb activities are great for bell ringers, reviews, exit tickets and quick comprehension checks, and the company plans to add additional lessons later this year.

Nearpod is dedicated to the expansion of digital content and interactive tools that empower teachers to transform instruction for their students. In moving beyond the traditional classroom model, new approaches such as augmented and virtual reality as well as culturally-relevant and media-rich content can have a dramatic impact on student engagement.

Time to Climb can be played in any grade level and supports all classroom sizes. The new offering will work on all devices such as desktops, iPads, Chromebooks, Android devices and more. Time to Climb is currently available through teacher-paced lessons.

“It’s fun for students to be able to practice the vocabulary using a different method that is more engaging for them,” said Rachelle Dene Poth, a teacher at Riverview High School in Pennsylvania. “Time to Climb makes my students excited to work through the lesson, and they enjoy the friendly competition it fosters. It provides me with another way to create more authentic and personalized practice for my students.”

The launch of Time to Climb comes on the heels of Nearpod’s acquisition of Flocabulary, the leading video and student creativity platform that uses educational hip-hop songs and music videos to increase achievement and bring joy to the classroom. The combined company is leveraging its comprehensive student engagement platform and creativity, culture, interactivity and multimedia to introduce a new series of dynamic and engaging mini-lessons. Today, Nearpod reaches seven million students a month with it’s interactive, standards-aligned content and engagement tools. 

Teachers can add Time to Climb activities to any existing or new Nearpod lesson - check the collection of ready-to-run lessons here or can stop by Nearpod’s booth (#2234) at ISTE 2019.  

Time to Climb is available at no additional charge for all Nearpod users, including users of Nearpod’s free Silver licenses. To sign up for a free Silver account and start using Nearpod today, click here.

About Nearpod
Nearpod, named EdTech Digest’s Company of the Year in 2018, is the most comprehensive Student Engagement Platform for K-12 teachers. Nearpod works with any classroom technology from tablets and smartphones to laptops and Chromebooks to help engage students with activities such as Virtual Reality, PhET and Desmos, and with more than 7,000 ready-to-run lessons created in partnership with leading brands like Common Sense Education and the Pulitzer Center. Nearpod recently acquired Flocabulary, a learning platform that helps students thrive by bringing the K-12 curriculum to life through hip-hop. Beyond classroom instruction, the company revitalizes teacher development through Teacher Professional Learning content that cultivates classroom-changing strategies for educators. To learn more, visit: nearpod.com.

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