I revisited the in-class polling today in Intro Bio. I love asking open-ended questions, having the students think about it on their own for a minute, then answer. This helps engage them, but I can't fully assess what the entire class knew, just the few who I can get an answer from. Back to polling then! I have done this before and enjoyed it but what I really wanted this time was to make it efficient. I don't want to have to go through explanations every time I want to poll, and I want them to be able to answer quickly. My solution was as follows:
- set up one single poll that allows full text entry
- provide the students with a handout that spelled out all the different ways that they could add their answer to this poll. Remember that as long as they have either a web or text-capable cell phone, a tablet, or a laptop with them, Polleverywhere.com lets them put in their answers by....
- .....a simple website interface
- .....texting to a 5 digit number, then they have to provide one specific 6 digit number each time that directs them to the specific poll, then they type their answer
- .....tweeting to an address that has the specific poll
A picture of the handout is shown (with the numbers blocked out so noone can hack it :) )
Note that the students did not have to log in at any time. Also, I asked the students to bookmark the sites or text location. Since I will just reuse the same poll over and over they won't have to mess around with inputting different numbers every time.
Will it work? Well, I polled 2 times in class today after an initial time when I stepped everyone through it. The students seemed to have minimal issues getting going for each poll and I didn't feel like I wasted any time on technical issues.
