Poll Everywhere Review

Once again, it's Friday, so time for me to review and share a new Web 2.0 tool.  This week, it's Poll Everywhere.  This is a wonderful tool for the classroom if you want to poll your students and get immediate feedback but don't have clickers to go along with your interactive whiteboard (or don't have an interactive whiteboard at all, it can be sent right to your computer screen for your viewing only).  Simply create the question with multiple choice answers.  The poll can be downloaded and added to a PowerPoint presentation, or you can just give students the number and the codes.  Students will definitely get a kick out of being told to get out their cellphones and having to text in their answers to the question on the board.  There are a few things to be careful of though.  First, not all students may have a cellphone, so be prepared to deal with that so those students don't feel left out.  Also, not all phones have the capability to use short codes, but, luckily, there is a regular 10 digit number students can text in as well if they can't use short codes.  As a teacher, you cannot see students' individual answers, so they can't be graded on their answers. The purpose of Poll Everywhere is to gauge how much of the information students understand and see what needs to be reviewed in the next class period. Finally, student's can't answer questions more than once, which can be either good or bad.  This can be bad because students can't change their answers if they wanted, so make sure to emphasize that fact. Refer to the video below to see what a Poll Everywhere poll looks like.

Overall, Poll Everywhere is a very useful tool.  Try it out in your next lecture or presentation to see how much your students enjoy it.