Nepris is a cloud-based platform that helps connect K-12 classrooms with industry experts across an enormous range of careers and industries. It’s an absolutely excellent tool for helping bridge the gap between the classroom and the real-world, and there are a number of different ways Nepris can be utilized, even at the early elementary level. For teachers looking to bring in guest speakers, offer virtual tours, provide students with real-world feedback, and so much more, Nepris has you covered. Let’s take a look!
Before jumping into the review, let’s take a look at a short overview from the Nepris team:
Overall, Nepris is designed to help classroom teachers make connections to industry through video conferencing with individuals or groups from a large variety of companies. There are some additional features beyond that (which we’ll get into), but at the core, that’s what Nepris is all about. The company is focused on helping bring relevance and exposure into K-12 classrooms, and helping students expand their understanding of what career possibilities exist that they may not be otherwise aware of.
Nepris is not a mentoring or tutoring service; rather, they are focused on fostering collaboration and engagement between students and professionals. It’s not a one-on-one service, but something a teacher would set up with their entire class.
As for pricing, there are two options. The Bronze Plan is essentially a free trial that teachers can use to test out Nepris and see if it’s a good fit for your classroom. The Platinum Plan offers you unlimited virtual chats and access to live industry chats. The Bronze Plan is a great place to start because you also have access to all the videos that Nepris has added to their library including previous industry chats and classroom chats. These resources alone offer a ton of value and are a great source for bringing real-world relevance into classrooms across all subject areas.
Overall, the service is incredibly easy to use. You can create a session request and the Nepris system will go to work partnering you up with someone from industry to match your needs. They offer a variety of session types: Topic Presentations, Project Mentoring, Project Evaluation, Student Self Assessment, and Classroom Collaboration.
These different session types go to show the wonderful variety of ways that Nepris can be used. Some of the best examples I’ve seen so far are of teachers having industry professionals come in to watch student presentations and providing feedback to those students. I personally believe this would be an incredibly powerful learning experience for those students, and I think it’s a wonderful use of Nepris.
The Nepris team will also do everything they can to find a specific industry professional related to the topic you’re interested in. This Valkyrie Project from NASA is a prime example:
The students in this class had specifically requested to be partnered up with someone who was working on the Valkyrie Project and Nepris managed to reach out and hook them up with this session, which was highly engaging and enjoyable.
Nepris also offers live industry chats, where companies or organizations can list a specific topic that they would like to discuss and teachers can sign up to bring their classes. You can check out the upcoming chats here, but like everything on Nepris, there are a wide variety of topics and subject areas available.
Currently, Nepris has over 18,000 professionals on their platform, but they also have a partnership with LinkedIn. This means that every time you post a session request, that post will also go to LinkedIn where industry professionals can sign up to participate. In short, there is no shortage of professionals and career fields that are represented across Nepris.
When you do get partnered up with an industry professional, Nepris will also host a practice session prior to the real chat, just to make sure everything is working fine (they use Zoom for the video calls) and that there aren’t questions on either end.
There are so many wonderful examples of video chats that help students make connections between the content they’re learning and the real-world applications of that content, that I highly recommend just heading to their video library (which has over 2,600 videos currently) and seeing what they have. Plus, everything is broken down by grade level, curricular alignment, etc. Here’s another one of my favorites:
Finally, Nepris also offers big picture data and analytics for school administrators so they can see how the platform is being used. Surveys are also given after each session to capture student feedback in order to better understand how the session went and what the students thought. The team offers an Admin Dashboard where reports and additional analytics are available.
Overall, I’m a huge fan of Nepris. They offer a service that is both powerful and important. By helping students see the enormous variety of career opportunities that exist, students can expand their understanding of what possibilities might be out there for them. By connecting content to the real-world, students can see the real-world importance behind what they’re learning. Of all the tools I’ve seen that help bring real-world connections into the classroom, Nepris is one of the best by far.
In short, if you’re looking for a way to help students make connections, explore real-world possibilities, and make content more engaging and applicable, I absolutely recommend trying Nepris. Their free Bronze plan is a great way to start, and you can explore all the content they have already created this way as well. You can signup on their homepage and start exploring.
The opinions expressed in this review are my own.
I was not compensated for writing this review.
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