Reviews & Comments of Pear Deck Power-Up chrome extension
From September 19th, 2018 to September 8th, 2022, 18% user give 5-star rating, 6% user give 4-star rating, 18% user give 2-star rating, 59% user give 1-star rating. for Pear Deck Power-Up chrome extension.
Reviews of pear deck power-up:
Everyone that can't get it to work needs to follow the directions on the PearDeck support site. You HAVE to launch the session from Google Slides and choose interactive mode. It does NOT work for existing sessions. Even if you create the session from google slides, then close it, and reopen it again from the peardeck.com session list, it will not work. That's the only reason why I don't give it 5 stars - it would be nice if it worked if I'm reopening a current session.
I have been using PearDeck for several years and have come up with myriad ways to get beyond its limitations with animations (hidden text for pacing by paragraph) and videos (auto-start, and click-to-start) in my presentations. This power up was supposed to make my existing presentations work with the formative questions and engagement strategies I love the app for. Unfortunately, exactly nothing different happened when I downloaded and installed it. My presentations lost all of the timing (like before) and none of the other normal Google Slides functionality was unlocked. Back to the drawing board...
Didn't work as promoted. Very frustrating! I thought maybe it was because my video links were to Youtube so I uploaded videos to Google Drive. Same problem. Too bad, it was my first and last time using PearDeck. Too much time wasted.
This does not work as promised. Two GIFs worked, but an embedded video is just a blank screen, and NONE of my Google Slides animations (text reveals and image reveals) worked at all. Like, not at all. The animated features (text, arrows, images, etc.) don't show up and the presentation just breezes right by them. For me, animations are an important part of a presentation to limit the amount of information being displayed at one time. To mimic animations in Pear Deck, it looks like I'll need to make multiple slides for each single slide in Google Slides. UGHHH.
WONT WORK >:(
uploaded but animations not working
does not work. animations still do not work.
When this was working it was wonderful! But, it hasn't been working since the school year started. Now, I've had to start thinking about other apps to fill the void.
Y'all... If Pear Deck could just offer the same options for Powerpoint that they do for Google Slides, it would be so much easier.. Instead, I found myself signing up for a Free Trial on my personal account, since Draw/Drag isn't offered without premium, and my school account (that HAS bought the premium license) doesn't work on Google Slides, then transferring my slides from pwoerpoint to google slides, downloading this USELESS add-on, and being excited to finally present a BLACK SCREEN to my students. No, this power-up does NOT work. I cannot play videos, there are no animations, etc. I jumped through so many hoops, just to be let down. If I wanted static slides, I would have just stuck with PowerPoint. So sad. Do not waste your precious, PRECIOUS time.
I can appreciate what the extension is trying to do, which is why I gave it 2 stars. But it solves one problem but creates new ones. Gifs work in "Teacher Paced" but not "Student Paced". Also, if you have other Google Slides "animations" like revealing text, don't count on those showing up. Students will only see the gifs (Nice!) but not any of the text (Doh!). Will revisit if updates to the extension fix the issue.
I read the reviews previously from two years ago to earlier this month. I installed the extension today (25 August 2020) and used it for distance learning and it worked well for my students! It might have updated from earlier this month, but so far I have had no issues with it!
Does not work.
I do not like the fact that it keeps giving me pop-ups saying "you installed pear."
I was so excited about this extension. Unfortunately, besides the gifs working now, the rest of the app is more cumbersome. The most glaring issue for me and my students is that they can no longer pause their slides. Pausing is one of the best features of pear deck, especially for my EL students and those with IEPs, so it makes the power-up (and the pear deck add-on) useless. Also, once the power-up has been added, it cannot be turned on or off. The only way to stop it is to remove it altogether. I am a huge Pear Deck fan, and am constantly spreading the word and showing others how to use it. I wish this extension actually worked, because having gifs would take PD to the next level.
It didn't work at all. Videos either open in a new window or show a black screen on the other computers. I followed all of the instructions, looked up tutorials and nothing worked. Canceled and uninstalled. What a waste.
I've used Pear Deck for a long time and love it, but this extension makes it even more powerful and is super easy to install. Looking forward to adding some fun stuff to my slides!
The power-up is so easy to use! I'm so excited to present my Pear Deck today :)