Logo of Lumio by SMART with a graphic of a stylized, abstract firefly above the brand name, symbolizing interactive and dynamic learning.

Lumio comparisons vs Pear Deck

Get more from your lessons and give students more ways to learn with Lumio.

Lumio gives students a variety of ways to learn while providing flexibility in content creation and lesson delivery. All at a low price.

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Give students more ways to learn,
especially with and from each other

1. Free-form student contribution to small group workspaces

Lumio

Lumio lets students connect with one another digitally, just like they do face-to-face. Enable free-form group collaboration to a shared workspace so students can add ink, text, web, and video links and search for online images using SafeSearch. Each group can take the learning in their own direction.

Track contributions

The attribution feature means everyone’s contributions are tagged with their name.
VS

Pear Deck

Compare Pear Deck, which is an add-on for Google Slides or PowerPoint and does not offer shared workspaces for free-form group collaboration. 

Limited participation

Pear Deck’s student participation is limited to individual contributions, primarily polling questions or drawings.

2. Free-form individual contribution in digital student handouts

Lumio

Give every student an individual copy of a lesson page, and empower them to respond in their own way, interacting with digital manipulatives, adding ink, text, web and video links, and safe-searched online images. 

Student learning ownership

Lumio’s student creation tools let them choose how they share their knowledge, so they take greater ownership of their learning. Enable students to create digital artefacts while you monitor their progress and provide feedback in real time.

VS

Pear Deck

Pear Deck offers limited ways for students to contribute by responding to a question (open text, multiple choice, or number), using ink to draw or dragging an item on a page. 

3. Whole-class brainstorming and discussion with Shout It Out

Lumio

Get the whole class thinking together and capture every student's ideas, questions, and connections in one space. 

Run a class discussion, brainstorming activity or take a quick poll where every student can share text or images into a shared space.

Equal, active opportunities

Individual student contributions can be tagged, and students have equal, active opportunities to share and develop their voice and ideas.
VS

Pear Deck

Pear Deck does not offer features designed for this kind of brainstorming or collaborative discussion via individual student contributions of text or images to a shared space.

4. Ignite engagement with a greater variety of customisable activities

Lumio

Give students over a dozen ways to interact and submit content with Lumio's 13 game-based activity and formative assessment templates. 

Wide variety of game-based templates

Lumio's templates are fully customisable with your own content, each with multiple visual themes appropriate for a variety of learning abilities and subjects. Student interactions include drag and drop, rank order, matching, sorting, hide-reveal, and many types of question and answer.

Ever-growing resource library

Lumio's ever-growing resource library of dozens of digital manipulatives and customisable handout activities is created by a team of former educators.
VS

Pear Deck

Pear Deck currently offers activity templates with five ways for students to interact with or submit content.

5. Team-based and competitive assessments

Lumio

Lumio’s collaborative team-based, game-based quizzes give you an easy way to create informal checks for learning in a way that engages students and supports social-emotional learning.

See in real time what your students have mastered, and which learning to review next.
VS

Pear Deck

Pear Deck does not currently provide team-based or competitive assessments.

6. Monitor progress and give real-time feedback

Lumio

Lumio provides teacher tools for meaningful synchronous and asynchronous feedback to students with a handout dashboard. See each student's work in real time and give feedback as they progress. Students can also respond to feedback in real time.

Feedback a variety of ways

Give feedback using a variety of content, including ink, text, web and video links, and images. Place them directly into student work, adding notes or guiding students through key concepts.
VS

Pear Deck

Pear Deck currently allows for teachers to leave text comments for students next to Drawing, Draggable, Text, Number, and Multiple Choice response types via the Dashboard (paid feature).
SMART Ambassadors

SMART is our go to method to get the job done in a much more efficient way for us. We can give kids what they need at the touch of a finger.

Carmon Arquette

Principal

7. More flexibility in content creation and lesson delivery

  • Multiple file types
  • Game-based
  • Adapt on the fly

Lumio lets you combine pages from different file types in a single Lumio lesson, including PDFs, Google Slides, PowerPoint, and SMART Notebook files.

Compare Pear Deck, where file types are limited to adding questions to Google Slides and PowerPoint files.

Access many types of individual, team-based, collaborative, and competitive games, all customisable for the material you want to teach. These include multiple drag-and-drop activities like matching, sorting, and filling in the blanks. Create a word search in seconds. Run a quiz where teams compete to answer their questions correctly, with their progress represented by a race track, a virtual game show, or hatching monster eggs. Create sorting games that challenge students using a wide variety of fun themes, including braving a dragon, battling pirates, or duelling on an electric guitar.

Compare Pear Deck, which offers fewer types of customisable games.

During live instruction, instantly add new pages, turn a new page into a student handout or group workspace, or add a Shout It Out activity – and save all your and your students’ work on these new activities to the lesson.

In Pear Deck, the ability to add content during lesson delivery utilises prompts from a limited selection of templates while in a Live Session.

A much lower price

Spend less and get more

Lumio has a free plan, and paid plans start at £45* per teacher, annually.
*Some regions don’t list the price. Please reference our pricing page 

Peardeck starts at £86 per teacher per year.

Smiling young student using a laptop with Lumio educational software.
Logo of Lumio by SMART with a graphic of a stylized, abstract firefly above the brand name, symbolizing interactive and dynamic learning.

Free software for educators

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Date of publication: 12 January 2022.

©2022 SMART Technologies. All rights reserved. All third-party product and company names are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners. Information contained in this document is accurate to the best of SMART Technologies ULC’s (SMART’s) knowledge as of the date of publication (12 January 2022). While SMART has made reasonable attempts to verify the accuracy and timeliness of the information herein, it is not responsible for any errors or omissions; all information is provided on an “as is” basis only. Results obtained from the use of this information are without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to, warranties of performance, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will SMART, its agents or employees be liable to you, or anyone else, for any decision made or action taken in reliance on the information in this comparison or for any consequential, special, or similar damages, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.