PowerPoint presentations are a staple in classrooms around the world; however, they can often be one-sided and disengaging. That’s where ClassPoint comes in! ClassPoint is an add-on tool for PowerPoint that transforms presentations into interactive and engaging experiences for both teachers and students. With a variety of teaching tools and features, ClassPoint helps teachers present more clearly and gets students engaged, involved, and actively learning.
How Does ClassPoint Create Interactive PowerPoints?
ClassPoint is a student engagement tool that adds an array of teaching tools to PowerPoint, making PowerPoint a much more desirable tool for Teachers. It offers Interactive questions & activities that involve students in the presentation, a gamified leaderboard to further motivate participation, teaching tools such as a Name Picker, and improved presenter tools for Teachers to turn their slides into whiteboards. ClassPoint even enables slide material & objects to be freely moveable during slide shows for more interactive presentation material.
For teachers, ClassPoint’s interactive elements added to PowerPoint make PowerPoint a stronger tool for presenting new material & lessons. These tools & questions/activities can help teachers better present & clarify/elaborate on complex/challenging concepts, get students to practice recall during their learning, and gauge student understanding allowing them to adjust lessons in real time as needed.
How to Add Questions to PowerPoint
ClassPoint’s interactive questions in PowerPoint work by simply adding a question button right to any slide. Teachers first create a question slide or add a question to their information slide. Then, they can turn it into a question by adding one of the eight question buttons to their slide. Teachers can set the question options too such as the number of choices, the correct answer, or whether to hide or reveal names on the submissions.
There are a variety of question types including multiple choice, short answer, fill in the blank, and word cloud etc. that are great for practicing or checking understanding or just sharing ideas, prior knowledge, etc. there are also quite a few multimedia questions that are great for increasing interactivity as well as learning & retention. These question types include slide drawing, image upload, video upload, and audio record.
How Students Join
Students can participate in these questions from their device by going to www.classpoint.app. They can use any device, and join with the class code that will appear in the top right corner of the presentation during slide show mode.
Teachers can use the randomly generated class code or they can actually create their own class of student names and set their own class code to be used every time for a faster joining process. Setting their student names in their saved class also gives teachers the opportunity for better student data and progress tracking.
Once the teacher runs the question by clicking on the button, students will be prompted to answer on their device, and the results will appear in colorful graphs, cards, images, etc. for everyone to see!
How to Gamify Participation
ClassPoint also has a gamified leaderboard that teachers can use to award students stars to engage and motivate participation or progress! Teachers can turn ClassPoint’s questions up a notch by awarding stars for correct or superb responses! Or, they can give students stars anytime inside their class view for whatever they would like to reinforce, it’s up to the teacher.
To gamify the ClassPoint questions in PowerPoint, teachers can award stars inside the question responses. They can give stars for correct answers such as all those who submitted choice A, all short answers that included ‘a searched word’, for notable submissions in word cloud, or all responses for a participation point.
When teachers award stars, students will be rewarded with an animated star on their device, and they will climb up the class rank! To reveal the star standings, teachers can open the Leader Board & podium. 🏆
A few things to know about the leaderboard:
- There is a current class session leaderboard and a total class session leaderboard. If teachers use a saved class, their stars will accumulate over time!
- Stars will add up to earn students Levels. The amount of stars in each Level is customizable!
- Stars & Levels can be reset anytime!
- Stars can be awarded anytime inside My Class, and not just inside the question responses! This makes the star & leaderboard system versatile & customizable for teachers.
How ClassPoint’s Presentation Tools Improve Engagement
To improve teaching with PowerPoint, ClassPoint adds presentation tools to PowerPoint to increase the function and capabilities of teaching, elaborating on, and clarifying new material.
- Annotation & Whiteboard Tools: ClassPoint’s toolbar added to the bottom of PowerPoint that allows teachers to use their slides as a more interactive whiteboard. There are pens, highlighters, text boxes, and different shapes with adjustable colors & thickness or size. Teachers can also open a fresh whiteboard slide anytime ,which are customizable for teachers to pre-set their own whiteboard backgrounds.
- Draggable Objects: ClassPoint also let’s teachers freely move their slide material around during their presentation! Teachers can enable any slide material or objects such as an image or text into a draggable object during presentation mode. With Draggable Objects, teachers now can design dynamic slides and drag to reveal information, sort & categorize for visual learning, and improve their student engagement with captivating, interactive slides.
And to further make PowerPoint a one-stop-shop for teachers and eliminate time wasted transition to other apps, ClassPoint adds handy teaching tools to it’s PowerPoint toolbelt!
- Name Picker: Teachers can save time & ditch the popsicle sticks by randomly drawing student names right in PowerPoint! They can spin a wheel of names or draw name cards, even multiple at a time!
- Timer: Teacher’s can also run a timer or start a stopwatch right inside PowerPoint. This can be handy during presentations, breaks, student work time, and more, and it can be enlarged to get students to focus on the time, or minimized for the teachers to keep track of while they move through their presentation.
- Browser: ClassPoint also has a full functioning internet browser embedded in its toolbar! Teachers also don’t need to leave PowerPoint to follow a link to the internet, they can open a window right on top of their current slide and search, browse, bookmark, & pin frequent sites. Very handy for visiting online lesson material or as an adhoc resource.
ClassPoint Free Vs. Paid
ClassPoint offers two plans: a Basic version with limited features and a paid Pro version.
ClassPoint’s free version comes with most of their tools & features, but limits the usage. Only 5 questions per PowerPoint, 25 students per class, and 3 saved classes. Free users are also limited to only the current class leaderboard, not the total class leaderboard.
Pro users enjoy the following perks: unlimited questions, 200 students per class, unlimited saved classes, total class leaderboard & podium, and Quiz Mode, which provides a formative assessment excel summary of all multiple choice questions in that deck.
ClassPoint Vs. Kahoot Vs. Nearpod
As a student Engagement tool for teachers, ClassPoint can be compared to similar tools with overlapping features such as Kahoot and Nearpod.
ClassPoint Vs. Kahoot
Kahoot is a game-based quiz platform where teachers can create quizzes and games for students to play.- They can compete against their peers in real-time or take it home and play on their own. Teachers can create their own quizzes based on their lesson material, or they can search through the Kahoot library of quizzes already created by other teachers.
Kahoot and ClassPoint have quiz questions in common, but they are quite different, as Kahoot is it’s own game learning platform and ClassPoint is an interactive teaching add-on for PowerPoint.
While Kahoot’s gaming elements can make learning fun and engaging for students, it’s gamified learning experience can diminish in value over time and it can become a distraction from the real goal of learning. ClassPoint’s questions are more versatile and can be used in either game or non-game contexts, such as a formative assessment or an SEL sharing discussion. Teachers can choose if they want to award stars and use the leaderboard on any given day.
Kahoot’s content library can be a huge boost to using the platform, but ClassPoint’s integration with PowerPoint allows teachers to use their existing presentations and turn it into an interactive lesson without learning a new software.
ClassPoint Vs. Nearpod
Nearpod is a teaching platform where teachers can create interactive & immersive lessons. Teachers can incorporate multimedia elements such as videos, 3D objects, and even VR simulations into their lessons, as well as run interactive learning games with their students. Nearpod offer’s an extensive content library to build lessons with and they can be used during teacher-led classes or as an independent study/homework tool for students.
What ClassPoint and Nearpod have in common is that they are both interactive teaching tools designed to make lessons more engaging and student-centered. But Nearpod, similar to Kahoot, is it’s own teaching platform, but it has a much bigger scope being a one-stop-shop for creating daily lesson material & activities.
Nearpod’s interactive activities are more versatile ranging from games to formative assessments, but ClassPoint’s also versatile questions operate in a more mature interface that can feel more suitable for diverse uses and ages.
If teacher’s want to reinvent their teaching style and material then Nearpod can be a really powerful solution, but it comes at a steeper price and greater learning curve. Teacher’s looking to supplement their existing lessons with interactivity, might find ClassPoint a more cost-effective and seamless choice.
Conclusion
If you are looking to improve your lesson engagement or teaching efficiency in PowerPoint, ClassPoint is a powerful tool that can help teachers engage their students and improve teaching with PowerPoint. With a range of interactive tools & features, including questions, gamification, and presenter tools, ClassPoint can help teachers present more clearly, elaborate on challenging concepts, get students to practice recall, gauge student understanding, and adjust lessons in real time as needed. And with a free and a Pro version, ClassPoint is accessible to teachers of all levels and budgets. Try it out and see how ClassPoint can improve student engagement inside a tool you already know!
