Hardware-based classroom response systems are expensive to buy and expensive to maintain. A web-based service called Poll Everywhere aims to bring conversation back to the lecture hall through the use of a device that is already in your student’s pocket.

At PodcampAZ, I had the chance to sit in on a number of talks by educators who are blazing new trails with technology use in the classroom. It was great to be with a group of people who didn’t fear trying new things – figuring out what works and abandoning what doesn’t.

Devon Adams talked about how he communicates with his students and their parents through a mix of Google apps. Students are required to have a gmail account on the first day of class and use it to monitor the course schedule (via Google Calendar) and provide contact information and respond to surveys (via Google Forms). Devon encourages rather than punishes students who use their cellphones in class. They use Google’s mobile search to look up information to add to the material being presented in class.

Shelley Rodrigo, who teaches at Mesa Community College, introduced me to a handful of new tools in her talk about Creative Chaos in the Classroom. During Shelley’s talk, some of us were assigned to surf the web and add bookmarks to Delicious as sites or topics came up. Others were assigned to live blog the lecture as it happened. All of the back channel information was aggregated on a web page she had set up to be a persistent record of what we talked about.

For me, the most exciting tool Shelley brought to the talk was Poll Everywhere, which is a service for posing multiple choice or open-ended questions to an audience and gathering their responses in real time.

How it works

What makes Poll Everywhere exciting is the manner in which the feedback is gathered. Respondents use their mobile phones to send a text message to the service. Shelley started out asking us a multiple choice question. The results were graphed, in real time, on the poll’s webpage. She finished with asking us for one take-away and our sentence-long responses displayed in a waterfall effect with new texts replacing old as the screen filled.

Presenters can choose to embed the polls into their PowerPoint slides or to visit the poll’s webpage and students aren’t limited to texting in their responses. Votes can also be gathered on the poll’s webpage or via Twitter.

Getting Started

You can create your first poll without signing up for an account. The poll will work for two weeks. Registering for an account will allow you to keep your polls and doesn’t required a credit card or answering too many questions. You will want to pick from the tabs for Business / Non-profit, K-12 or Higher Ed before signing up.

Setting up your poll begins with picking from the available types – multiple choice, free text or Goal poll. The first two a pretty self-explanitory. A Goal poll is used to take pledges for event fundraiser. As pledges are recorded, a thermometer moves toward your predetermined goal.

For multiple choice you type in your stem and provide your options. In the free plan the keywords respondents will use is assigned by the system. With a paid plan, you an customize the text your students will use to vote for a particular option.

Save your poll and the system will assign a unique number your students will use when texting in their responses.

Enough talk – Let’s demo

Dollars and Cents

There are different accounts and pricing depending on who you work for. Prices range from free (30 responses to one account and no extras) to $1,400 a month for businesses/non-profits needing 20,000 responses and 50 users. Extras include the ability to identify participants, moderate text responses before they display and the ability to choose your own keywords (what the respondent sends to register their vote).

K12 and Higher Ed have semester and yearly payment options and can have student rosters tied to the service for student-specific results and correlation across polls.

Don’t be scared

Both Devon and Shelley are doing exciting things in their classrooms. Rather than having students turn off the one piece of technology they are most comfortable with, they use those skills to bring a world of information to their classrooms.

Poll Everywhere also leverages a student’s expertise with their mobile phone. For you, the instructor, it brings instant feedback to your presentation and turns a stand-and-deliver talk into a conversation that is rewarding on both sides of the lectern.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 4:56 pm and is filed under For Teachers, Web App. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.