Poll Everywhere Experience

I have used this tool in the past with both teachers and some groups of students. With teachers, I have used it during PD sessions to gain some insight on how they feel about technology. It is also a tool that I have presented as a way to engage their students with multiple hardware platforms. With the rise in availability and affordability of various technologies, it has become common for students to own a mobile device that can provide great functionality.

At our school we encourage the use of student owned technology in the classroom. We see this as a positive opportunity to teach students to view the use and responsibility of technology. In order to help them appreciate the power these devices can have, we often suggest that they may use them to do research, create multimedia projects, and at times use it to engage in conversations like Poll Everywhere. In the past few weeks I have been working with a ninth grade English teacher and her class in converting the students in using Google Docs as an alternative to MS Office. I used Poll Everywhere to ask a few students what they liked best about Google Docs. Here's a chart with the results.

 

This tool offers the students to use their mobile devices to answer the question. This is a great use of technology that can come in handy if there is ever a situation where there are not enough computers, but some students have smart phones that can access the poll. It is also a neat way to help them focus on the content being taught, and preferably deter from the distractions the phone might offer form being idle. The only challenge I can foresee is having different phones that work differently. While many phones now have an operating system that is fairly standard in the way that it works and presents functions, it can be time consuming to support different platforms for a single activity.

Here's my brief survey:

http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/MjEwOTg0ODYwMg/web