A Pear Deck alternative when your lessons are PDFs
Pear Deck adds interactive questions to a Google Slides or PowerPoint Online presentation. If your lessons are worksheets and past papers, and you want to write on them live while students follow, ClassKite works from the PDF itself.
Teaching from your PDFs, student layers and running practice are free on Teacher Basic. The Live Student Grid, Reports and the Gradebook are part of class analytics, included with Teacher Plus and the School plan.
The problem
Pear Deck works inside your presentation: you build the lesson in Google Slides or PowerPoint Online, add question slides with its add-on, and students answer on their devices as you present. That works well when the lesson is a slide deck. When it is a worksheet or a past paper you work through by hand, you want to work on the page itself and have every student's screen show your writing.
Teach from the page, then check with practice
Upload the PDF to ClassKite and teach from it on the board. What you write on your layer appears on students' devices as you write, and follow-me paging keeps them on your page. Students write their own working on their layer of the same pages, where you can leave private feedback. When you want answers, send a practice from the same section: it is marked automatically, and with Teacher Plus or the School plan the Live Student Grid fills in as students answer.
How it works
- 1
Upload the PDF
Upload your PDFs, including slide decks exported as PDF. It opens exactly as it prints.
- 2
Write as you explain
Model the method on the board. Every student's screen follows your page and shows your writing live.
- 3
Send a practice
Students answer on their devices, and every answer is marked automatically.
- 4
See who needs help
With Teacher Plus, the Live Student Grid shows who is stuck; afterwards, Reports and the Gradebook keep the results.
In the classroom
A maths teacher who used to rebuild each worksheet as slides now opens the worksheet itself, works the first two questions on the board while every screen follows, and sends a short practice on the rest. The Live Student Grid shows three students stuck on the same question, so the teacher works another example with the class.
An illustrative example of how a lesson can run, not a customer case study.
What you get
No deck to build
Teach from the PDF you already have. Slide decks work too once you export them to PDF.
Follow-me paging
Students' screens move to the page you're on and show your strokes as you write.
Students' own working
Each student writes on their own layer of the page, and you can open it to give feedback on the line that went wrong.
Marked for you
Six question types, marked automatically: multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank (word or number), matching and jumbled sentence.
Progress while they answer
The Live Student Grid shows who is in progress, done or struggling. It is part of Teacher Plus and the School plan.
Free for students
Students join with your code and never pay. There are no per-student charges.
Explore more of ClassKite
Frequently asked questions
When is Pear Deck the better fit?
When you build lessons in Google Slides or PowerPoint Online and want to stay there, or want answer types ClassKite doesn't have. Pear Deck's question types include text, drawing, draggable and poll responses as well as choice and number, and it also offers a tool that converts PDFs into Pear Deck lessons. ClassKite's questions are auto-marked types only, with no free-text or poll answers, and it does not connect to Google Classroom. Pear Deck's free teacher plan works with Google Classroom; some features, including the Teacher Dashboard, are part of Premium. (Compared with Pear Deck's website and help pages, checked 22 October 2026.)
Can I bring my Google Slides or PowerPoint lessons?
Yes, as PDFs. Export the deck to PDF and upload it. The interactive Pear Deck slides do not come across, so you add practice questions in ClassKite.
Can students see what I write?
Yes, on every plan. Once you share the section, students follow your layer in their Teacher view and see your writing as it happens.
Can students draw their answers?
Students can write and draw their working on their own layer of the page, and you can give feedback on it there. That working is not marked: only practice answers are.
Do students need accounts?
Students need a free ClassKite account: they create it when they join your class with its code, or you import a class list and ClassKite creates the accounts. Students never pay.
Try ClassKite with your class
Start free as a teacher, or see how it rolls out across a whole school.
Teacher Basic is free, with no payment details needed