Poll Everywhere

https://www.polleverywhere.com/

Poll Everywhere is a dynamic online voting platform that enables students to vote on personalised text messaging (SMS), tablet, or computer-generated polling stations by visiting this website. With a free Poll Anywhere educator account, polls will receive up to 40 votes, enough to satisfy most classrooms. In the school, there are two kinds of poll questions that can be used: multiple choice or open text. Teachers can produce polls easily to be deployed separately or as a series of questions. Via a variety of devices, all polls can also receive submissions. Students may send text messages, use a smartphone, mobile device, notebook, laptop, or computer to vote online. 

When it is shown, students will respond by following the instructions shown in the poll. They respond by sending a text message to the number on the screen or teachers can get and share a custom url with students in the web app or even via Twitter to respond.  Teachers can set preferences for each poll about how they want to allow responses to be sent in.

Poll Everywhere can be used as a formative assessment strategy that enhances and amplifies classroom discussion, participation, and understanding. In addition to the quick-serve nature of the tool, site-generated polls can be integrated into PowerPoint presentations for real-time audience participation.

Learning Activities

Ways to use live polling in class to engage and interact with students.

Ice Breakers

• Teachers can create polls for incoming beliefs, pre-conceived ideas, and pre-existing knowledge to get a sense of what students already know and think about a topic.

• Teachers can collect open-ended response data and put it into a word cloud for students to review and analyze.

• In a college setting, Polldaddy can be used in orientation sessions as a means to interact with hundreds of freshmen at once.

Assessment

• Before the class: Teachers can evaluate understanding of homework assignments.

• During the class: Teachers can assess understanding of lecture content or can use Polls as a discussion starter.

• After the class: Teachers can create Poll for lingering questions & shape subsequent starting points.

• By registering students, educators can use Poll Everywhere to administer and instantly grade quizzes.

Group work and Peer review

• Using the segmentation feature in Poll everywhere, a class can be divided up in groups for any team competition.

• Teachers can use Poll Everywhere as a voting mechanism in a group peer review exercise. Students can use this feedback to monitor their own learning and instructors can use it to change how they manage class in response to students’ learning needs.

Review assigned readings

• Teachers can use polls to ask students to make a prediction and review assigned readings. For example in a literature class the teacher can ask a questions via Poll Everywhere about how the the main character will react to a problem.

• Or in a Science class, teachers can ask questions like, “What will happen when oxygen is introduced to the compound?”

• Or in Math class, the teacher can ask what number will come next in a series?

Think Pair share activities

First, present your polling question in class and ask your students to submit their responses without talking to anyone. Stop the poll and do not display the results graph to the class. Now, ask students to turn to the person next to them and discuss the question in a small group and come to a consensus within the small group.  Start a new poll, asking the same question, still not displaying the results graph.  Instruct your students to now submit their responses based on their group’s decision.  Now display the responses and also show the results of the initial poll taken without any discussion. You should see a larger number of students responding with the correct answer after discussing it among themselves.  This activity works very well with a question that addresses common misconceptions about a certain concept.

Instructions: How to Poll a class live

• Prepare your polls. On your My Polls page group the polls you need for each class, and drag and drop them into the correct order

• Prepare the students. Let them know that they should have their mobile devices handy so they can participate.

(Pro tip: Some professors display a separate slide about how to respond, either while everyone takes their seats, or just before the poll starts.)

• Display your first poll full-screen. This automatically activates the poll, so you can receive responses. If you’re not going to display it full-screen, click the icon to activate the poll manually.

• Display the chart, and watch answers appear, live. You can also click the Hide/Show Chart icon to keep results hidden, and display the chart only after responses arrive. This is a good option if you’re concerned that students might be influenced by others’ answers.

• Use the arrow keys on your keyboard, or the arrow icons at the bottom of the poll chart, to move to the next poll. As soon as it displays full-screen it will take over as the active poll, so that everyone can follow along on their phones, tablets, or laptops.