Nearpod Now Brings Interactive Digital Instruction to 1.8 Million Students in Southern California

Nearpod, the interactive, instructional platform that merges formative assessment and dynamic media to create engaging learning experiences, today announces its partnership with five Southern California school districts. Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, Desert Sands Unified School District, Fontana Unified School District, Santa Ana Unified School District and Lancaster School District now use the interactive instructional platform to help connect students and teachers across distance learning, hybrid and in-person environments.

The five districts will gain access to over 8,500 standards-aligned lessons, including Nearpod’s new interactive video content. Educators can also upload their own lessons from Google Slides, PowerPoint, YouTube videos or their own videos into the platform. All lessons are customizable with the platform’s interactive features like Quizzes, Polls, Simulations and VR Field Trips. 

“When looking to provide our teachers with a best-in-class digital instructional tool, Nearpod was the clear choice,” shared Linda Adamson, Assistant Superintendent of Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. “Especially as we start this year remotely, we are thrilled to be bringing more interactivity to our students.”

Nearpod’s platform aids teachers in creating frequent, direct, and meaningful interactions with students during remote instruction, both synchronously and asynchronously, as recommended by leading education experts, including the California State Board of education President, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond. This gives educators the freedom to deliver live or student-paced instruction in a way that engages students and allows for interaction while offering teachers data to help drive instruction in real-time. Also unique to Nearpod’s device-agnostic platform is its single-click lesson deployment, which makes it simple for students, parents and guardians to join lessons from home. 

“As we built out the resources we wanted to provide for students and teachers this year, we knew we needed a reliable instructional platform that could flex in and out of the classroom,” stated Rebecca Cooksey, Assistant Superintendent of Lancaster School District. “Bringing Nearpod on board has allowed us to bring stability to our students in these uncertain times, and provide a solution that facilitates collaboration and engagement regardless of where learning is taking place.” 

In addition to the core platform offering, Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District (USD), Fontana USD and Santa Ana USD will offer Nearpod’s English Learners content, which features rigorous, grade-level and research-based learning experiences and language instruction. To support instruction in computer science including coding, applications of technology, digital safety and media literacy, Fontana USD teachers alongside Lancaster teachers will receive access to Nearpod’s Digital Citizenship and Literacy content. 

Staff and students at Lancaster School District will also gain access to Nearpod’s Flocabulary platform, which provides educational hip hop videos, lesson activities and creativity tools, bridging the gap between rigorous academic standards and cultural relevance, all while supporting literacy across subject areas. Further, Desert Sands USD is adding Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and College and Career Exploration content. Nearpod’s SEL content will help teachers incorporate strategies that build positive, safe and empowering class communities, while the College and Career Exploration curriculum creates opportunities for students to discover education and career possibilities after graduation. 

“We are proud to be serving the communities of Southern California as they navigate changing needs this school year and beyond,” remarked Pep Carrera, CEO of Nearpod. “Our platform now provides thousands of educators and millions of students in the region and beyond with the ability to easily engage learners and create meaningful classroom experiences with high-quality, standards-based lessons.”

In addition to its instructional platform, Nearpod has integrations with learning management systems as well as communication and collaboration platforms, including Schoology, Canvas, Microsoft Teams and Google Classroom. A recent Zoom integration enables teachers to launch a lesson and video conference simultaneously. When hybrid and in-person learning resumes, teachers will be able to easily transition Nearpod to the physical classroom, even if students don’t have devices, with Nearpod’s Front-of-Class mode.

To learn more about Nearpod, visit: nearpod.com 

About Nearpod
Nearpod offers an interactive, instructional platform that merges formative assessment and dynamic media for live and self-paced learning experiences inside and outside of the classroom. Nearpod is a device-agnostic platform that engages students with activities such as Virtual Reality, PhET simulations and Desmos, and features more than 8,500 ready-to-run interactive lessons and videos created in partnership with leading brands like Common Sense Education and Smithsonian. In 2019, Nearpod acquired Flocabulary, a learning platform that engages students in academically rigorous K-12 curriculum while promoting literacy through hip-hop videos. Together, Nearpod and Flocabulary reach educators in 99 of the 100 largest school districts in the US. In 2018, Nearpod was named EdTech Digest’s Company of the Year. To learn more, visit www.nearpod.com.
 

Contact Information

Rachel Stoczko

Communications Manager

Nearpod

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