Tools: Poll Everywhere

What is Poll Everywhere?

Poll everywhere, also known as Poll Ev, is web-based service where anyone can create multiple-choice or open-ended questions and people can respond via text, Twitter or website.

This technology can be used as a great formative assessment piece to help you judge if students understand the concepts or if there needs to be more clarity made. It is not as easy to identify who answered what, but you will gain a better consensus of the class.

The teacher will make the questions in a variety of formats:

• Multiple Choice poll

• Free responses ( students can send in any answer), I would just be careful that your students wouldn't send in anything inappropriate. You would have to trust your class for this type of format.

• True or False

• Click-able images poll - this can be great for identifying a shape, or a certain character. When answers can be expressed visually this can be a great option.

• Q&A brainstormer poll

Student interact with the poll through texting in through their own cellphones or through any electronic device accessing through the web. The can assess the poll through the web via PollEv.com/yourname. Each poll will have a number for students to respond to that they enter or click on based on their accessing format.

The results from the poll can be shown as a bar-graph, word cloud or wordle.

The K-12 basic plan is free with up to 40 responses per question. More content and options do cost money.

For more information make sure to check out the website.

Poll Ev benefits in the classroom

Poll everywhere is an instant audience feedback tool. And the free version is much more affordable than using clickers. You can gain real time accurate results from the students/audience.Teachers are able to gain insight on where theirs students are on the content.It is a great formative assessment piece. If current pedagogical practices have not worked with the students grasping the content. Poll Ev is great for low-stakes assessment where students can submit individual responses to the questions before they discuss the same problems in teams. You can embed the Poll in your power-point if that is your preferred platform, so you don't have to switch over to the website.

Here is an example of a Poll Ev question.

Here's a great video explaining the benefits of the ability to take a quick poll in the class.

You do not have to have the poll question made in advance. The system is pretty straight forward and you can make a quick question up during the class. This allows for easy flexibility to adjust on the fly based on what you feel you or the students need.

This poll system encourages students to pay attention in class so they can answer the poll questions. And it also stimulates collaboration between students.By having interactive components of a lesson students are engaging in the content and applying what they have learned to thinking questions created by the teacher.

TPACK and Poll everywhere

Addressing the TPACK framework is important when wanting to use any technology in the classroom. This poll system provides engagement and reinforcement of the course content. This system relies on the teacher to create well designed and relevant questions that are incorporated well into the class with timing and use of content. Each question provides collaboration opportunities for students with their peers on the content. It also reinforces the content learned. It's a stimulating way to take formative assessment or a temperature check of where the students are in the material. And practice the information learned in a relevant way.

This tool offers the use of visual questions and free answer submission. The visual answers can be a great opportunity to connect images or people to different terms or scenarios. In chemistry it may sometime help to have a visual of the structure to understand the elements properties rather than a name. I can definitely see this tool to be a valuable in a range of subjects, especially academic subjects.

I think it could be easy to go overboard and incorporate an excess of questions. The students still need to the learn the content and fully understand the content. To ensure that this technology is used in a constructive way it is important to only use the poll system to check in on the major goals or outcome of the unit or lesson. This poll system can reinforce what students understand and show both the teacher and the students where they lack understanding and need to direct more focus. I do not believe this system should be used as a summative assessment tool due to some of the restrictions of the software. But it is a great interactive and immediate response system that can be extremely valuable in the classroom.

You do need to be cautious that you are able to include all the students in the class. If you are relying on cell phones then all students need not only to have charged cell phones, but need to be able to send out text during class time (ie. not going into their texting limit). If there are students who do not have phones, some device would need to be made available to them so as to not exclude them from the activity. Knowing your demographic and what is appropriate for you class and school is very important to take into consideration.

Downsides/ Concerns with to Poll Ev

• There is no timer, so you may want to create one yourself or do a count down before you cut it off. Students usually like a visual indication of how much time they have to answer a question.

• If you want to give students credit for Poll Ev responses the students need to register their cell phones or create an account with Poll Ev. If they don't create an account they have to log in each time and submit responses using a browser. And once students have this set up, to document their entries you will need to download the results into an Excel spreadsheet and adjust from there.

• Poll Ev doesn't deal with multiple responses well. If a student wants to change their answer and you a have allowed students to submit more than one response (note the free version only allows 40 responses) then the poll system records both responses. If you are marking the responses you will have to go in manually and only count the last response for each student. So it doesn't allow the student to change their response, it just allows the option to submit another response. Therefore you total data collected will be off with multiple answers submitted. The clicker system in better in the ability to allow students to change their response.

• And as previously mentioned, this system relies on each student being connected a device. If you are relying on all students to use a cell phone, make sure this is appropriate and acceptable for the class. You do not want to exclude any of your students. Also, if you are allowing students to share phones then you need to allow more than one response per phone/account.

• If students know the polls are not for marks they are more likely to carelessly guess or not participate, and not gain the benefits of doing practice questions in class.

Kevin's Review:

Introduction

So you're giving a presentation and you want to get some feedback from your class. Through a simple web interface, Poll Everywhere lets you collect instant classroom feedback. Just type in a question, and your audience can respond using laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and even your old flip phones! (Text a KEYWORD to #####)

Expensive voting hardware systems (such as iClickers) are difficult to set up and don't allow for comments. Poll Everywhere replaces that with standard web technology. Using an online service for classroom and audience responses, it allows you to engage their embedded results into your presentation in real time.

Create your poll here

Choose between these types of questions:

Open-ended, Free Response, Discourse Polls (Q&A, Brainstorming)

Students can give text answers of any length. The open-ended responses can be displayed in a variety of ways, including a text wall and a live Word Cloud.

Multiple-choice, True/False

This gives the students a number of different options to choose from. The results are presented in a graph.

Clickable image

This allows you to upload an image which the students can then click on using their computer or mobile device. For example, students could be asked to identify a particular area on a map or a feature on a graph. Clickable image can only be used via the web link or the app.

Responses are then received in real time through mobile devices, Twitter, or web browsers. These are then viewed live on the web or can be even directly integrated in your presentation!

In the Classroom

Teachers can gain valuable feedback about how well students understand a concept while allowing them to use their phones (they are sure to be excited when this happens) for something useful in class! Since Poll Everywhere is built with HTML5, it can be used with any device and is also responsive to screen size. There are also apps available on various platforms, allowing for a variety of mobile devices to be used. If all else fails just send in a text! (standard messaging and data rates may apply)

K-12

You want to be able to engage your classroom in deep learning, take attendance, collect anonymous feedback, or even check-in on their learning goals! With Poll Everywhere, you can take the guessing game out of participation points and score quizzes. Even the most quiet students can be invited to contribute! You can easily create a poll in 30 seconds, adding flexibility to your lesson plan.

Sign up for a free plan now OR

Purchase an affordable education plan with PREMIUM features such as registering your students to track their responses over time.

TPACK

Poll Everywhere fits into a wide variety of content knowledge, and can encourage collaboration. Students next to each other can be given a certain amount of time to work together on a problem. By teaching each other, they reinforce their learning through testing knowledge and participating in valuable academic activities. This is also a chance to experiment with curriculum, as results from quizzes can show teachers whether students understand the material they're teaching. With Poll Everywhere, instructions can be changed on the fly, and information that students missed can be repeated. More examples can also be added in due to PollEv's quick and easy set up system. With its immediate feedback system, both teacher and students can be informed on where the lack of content knowledge is and supplement it by using polls as formative assessments or reviews. By experimenting with these learning methods, instructors can explore the viability of mobile devices in education. Poll Everywhere provides an engaging and stimulating experience with students in the course content while allowing them to use their mobile devices for something useful in the classroom.

Just a Heads Up!

• requires a mobile device to vote, sharing devices can be considered here

• requires an Internet connection to set things up, would be a nuisance if the school WiFi is not stable

• difficult to maintain results for comparison unless students sign up for an account

• text message option will charge students on the standard mobile phone company rate

• the free version allows only 40 responses so multiple response polls would not work well unless you clear the poll results, a premium plan MAY be needed

Please take a moment to enjoy this short clip!