Flexible in-class polling without clickers

I have been able to play around with clickers here and there over the past year (see earlier post on 11/3/2012) and really enjoy some of the things they bring to the class. The things that bugged me about them though was 1) having to lug around the clickers (ok, it's not that bad but in addition to everything else I carry....), 2) the challenge for text entry for some of the models I tried, and 3) the troubleshooting we would have to do each time.

To address this I tried a different approach using PollEverywhere, one of many different on-line polling services. It took about a half hour to figure out the little things about it but it wasn't too bad. Here's how it addressed the issues noted above:

1. lugging around the clickers - no need to! Students can use any data-capable electronic device that they would normally bring. This includes cell phones (with at least texting capacity which is pretty standard these days), tablets, and laptops. 
2. text entry - very easy with any of the devices noted above and the way they send in the info is flexible: they can text the answer, tweet it, or use a web-interface
3. troubleshooting -  the students are using devices that they are already very capable with so there's no technical issues on that end. 

Other advantages: 

• I can see where this would address other issues too like batteries dying on clickers, or students forgetting their clickers (if they were required to purchase). 
• service is free as long as your class is under 40 students - which is the case for most of our classes here at Elon
• with text entry you can take the class responses and report them in a word cloud (see previous post) which is a really nice way to quickly summarize responses like this. 
• no need for students to purchase anything new - although if even a small percentage don't have a mobile data-cable device of some sort (including a laptop) that could be a limiting factor)

Disadvantages: 

• While probably 30 of my 33 students had at least one capable device on them, a few of the students do not carry these around regularly and therefore could not participate. 
• as a very simplistic texter I was challenged to communicate to the students how to text to the site. This only involves a few code numbers but nonetheless it turned out to take a minute for all of us to get on the same page.