Blue Sky Thinking Using Mentimeter
Blue Sky Thinking in a Socially-Distanced Classroom using Mentimeter
This strategy is a means of kick-starting a student’s imagination and compels students to provide a variety of options or ideas.
Key Skills
Managing information and thinking
Managing myself
Communicating
Being literate
Being creative
Working with others
Required Resources
In the Classroom setting
Mentimeter account. (Trial version is sufficient & students do not necessarily need an account)
Teacher PC / Laptop
Projector
Students: Mobile phones, tablets or chrome book.
Online Teaching & Learning
Mentimeter account. (Trial version is sufficient)
Teacher PC / Laptop
GoogleMeet
Students: Mobile phones, tablets or chrome book.
The Technology: Mentimeter
Mentimeter is a tool that allows teachers engage and interact with students in real-time.
Mentimeter provides the ability to generate questions, assign polls, get image feedback, create matrices and more.
The teacher and students can use word clouds, open-ended questions and more to start conversations and spark ideas in the classroom.
Advantages:
Mentimeter gives every student a voice, and prevents only the loudest in the class from being heard.
Students can answer and contribute using their smartphones.
Class group results, contributions etc can be downloaded as a PDF and shared with the whole class through Google Classroom.
How to use Mentimeter: Instructional Videos.
Mentimeter Tutorial
5 Ways to use Mentimeter to Interact & Engage
Mentimeter for the digital classroom - Webinar
Classroom Approaches / Strategies
Divide students into pairs.
(During curent restrictions, paired students will be in close proximity while maintaining required 1m distance.)
Each student will go to www.menti.com on their device / smartphone
(NOTE: Teachers use mentimeter.com to set up the presentation / question and students use www.menti.com)
They will input the classroom code when prompted.
Students are set a problem or question on the menti wall which they discuss in pairs.
(NOTE: Discussions will be noisy with masks!)
Each pair should be encouraged to give answers and be as creative as they can be .... the sky is the limit.
One member of each pair / group will share their ideas on the menti wall.
Once enough answers have been generated: the answers are discussed and eliminated until a solid few remain.
These answers will form the basis of a more detailed discussion in order to arrive at a solution to the question.
Junior Cycle for Teachers Resource
Points to Note / Alternative Approaches.
Students working together in virtual groups / pairs can generate lots of ideas.
Ensure all students get an equal opportunity to share.
Highlight that students should not be afraid to give wrong answers, as these may trigger an answer for someone else.
After the students have posted their ideas digitally on the mentimeter wall, the teacher can then help focus the discussion by introducing a number of simple criteria that should ultimately refine the ideas..
Alternative Approaches.
A follow-up activity might be to might be to use a shared GoogleDoc, preformatted with a placemat between four students.
Examples
Example of student feedback on a Mentimeter wall.
Menti word-cloud wall generated during a 6th Year Geography Lesson
Menti wall generated during a 2nd Year Enlgish lesson.