Workshopy vs Pear Deck
A Pear Deck alternative for hands-on lessons
Pear Deck is a K-12 tool for interactive slide lessons: the teacher builds the lesson in Google Slides or PowerPoint Online, adds questions to the slides — text, number, choice, drawing, draggable — and students answer on their own devices, either following the teacher's slide or moving at their own pace. Workshopy is built for hands-on lessons: each student works through the lesson's steps on their own screen and presses Done or Need help, and the teacher sees who is working, done or stuck on every step, answers help requests from a queue and gets a report of where the class got stuck. Choose Pear Deck for slide lessons with many answer types inside a Google or Microsoft school. Choose Workshopy when students do practical work and finish at different times.
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Two different products
Pear Deck
An add-on for Google Slides and PowerPoint Online, part of GoGuardian's Pear Deck Learning for K-12: interactive questions on slides, taught Instructor-Paced or Student-Paced, with a teacher dashboard that shows every student's answers as they arrive.
Workshopy
A lesson runtime: one Markdown document becomes a live class where each student works through the steps on their own screen, and the teacher sees each one's progress, answers help requests and gets a report.
Side by side
| Workshopy | Pear Deck | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Hands-on lessons: classrooms, bootcamps, corporate training, technical sessions | K-12 classrooms |
| Where lessons are built | Workshopy's own editor, visual or Markdown — or written by an AI app such as ChatGPT or Claude connected to your account | Google Slides or PowerPoint Online with the Pear Deck add-on; its AI can draft a deck from a topic, a file or a standard |
| Who controls the pace | Your choice per class: students roam with look ahead and look back, or follow your step; Bring everyone regroups them | Instructor-Paced (screens follow the teacher's slide) or Student-Paced, switchable mid-lesson |
| What the teacher sees live | Each student's step and status — working, done or asking for help — and who is taking longer than the class without asking | Each student's answers by name on the Teacher Dashboard (a paid plan); in Student-Paced mode, who is on each slide |
| Students asking for help | Need help with a note, a help queue taken oldest first, and private messages to the teacher | Students cannot message the teacher; the teacher can send one student feedback, one way |
| Activities | Polls, "got it" check-ins, graded quiz steps, practice exercises students check, and interactive blocks students play with | Text, Number, Choice, Poll, Drawing and Draggable questions, plus audio, websites and Immersive Reader |
| Code and technical material | Code blocks with syntax highlighting and a copy button; a step can ask students to paste what their program printed and checks it | Not a focus — a lesson holds what a slide can |
| Ready-made lessons | A public library of shared lessons to copy and adapt | Slide templates and a library of certified Math and ELA lessons for grades 2–12 |
| Joining | 6-character code or link, no account, any device | A join code at joinpd.com or a link; Google or Microsoft sign-in, or anonymous, as the teacher chooses |
| School systems | Runs in the browser beside your LMS and video call | Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams; Canvas and Schoology through LTI; Clever and ClassLink sign-in |
| After the class | A report per class — who finished each step, where they got stuck, how long they waited, polls and quizzes — and a page students keep with the lesson | Answers kept in the session and exportable to Google Sheets; Reflect & Review lets each student look back at their slides |
Compiled from each product’s public documentation. Deliberately no price comparison — published prices change without notice and a stale number here would be worse than none. Check both pricing pages.
Which one to use
Choose Workshopy when
- You teach a practical skill — code, data, software, a tool — and students do the work at their own pace.
- You need to see who is stuck, and students need a way to ask you for help without raising a hand in front of the class.
- Your lessons are text and code rather than slides, or you want an AI app to write them.
- You run the same lesson for new groups and want a report from each run.
Choose Pear Deck when
- Your lessons already live in Google Slides or PowerPoint and you want to add questions to them.
- You want drawing and draggable answers, or the class's anonymous answers on the projector.
- You teach K-12 and want ready-made, standards-aligned Math and ELA lessons.
- Your school runs on Google Classroom, Teams, Canvas or Schoology with Clever or ClassLink sign-in.
Frequently asked questions
Is Workshopy a Pear Deck alternative?
For hands-on lessons, yes: each student gets the lesson's steps on their own screen and you see who is working, done or stuck on each one. For slide lessons with drawing and draggable answers inside Google Slides or PowerPoint, Pear Deck is the better fit.
Can I bring my Pear Deck slides into Workshopy?
There is no importer for slide files. Workshopy imports Markdown: each top-level # heading becomes a step. An AI app such as ChatGPT or Claude, connected to your account, can turn the text of your slides into a Workshopy lesson for you to check.
Can students ask the teacher for help?
In Workshopy, yes: a student presses Need help, can add a note about what is wrong, and keeps working; the request waits in your Help tab, oldest first, and you can answer in a private message. In Pear Deck, students cannot message the teacher — the teacher can send feedback to one student, who cannot reply.
Other comparisons
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Workshopy vs a shared Google Doc
Most workshops run on a shared doc and a Zoom call. Here is exactly what that costs you, and what a purpose-built workshop runtime adds.
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