CSUSM Web 2.0 Tools for Educators - NETS 5

I conducted research on an online tool (Poll Everywhere) and joined Cal State San Marcos’ Web 2.0 community to contribute onto the site’s wiki pages.

Create interactive meetings at Poll Everywhere

Describe your tool and tell us what it does.

Poll Everywhere is a tool that allows people to create polls (go figure) and quizzes. Their intended audience can respond to them via text messages, or even the Internet (if enabled). Responses are instantly logged and displayed on a graph, which can be easily projected onto a screen.

How might it be used with a particular age or grade level?

This tool would work well in middle school and high school settings. Most of these students own cell phones and are already familiar with text messaging. Integrating this technology as a classroom tool should generally be well-received. It also allows for general assessments of whatever material is being covered.

Give an example of a project for that age or grade level group.

For grades 6-12, following assigned readings, you can test their comprehension of the material. You can generalize the responses by making them anonymous, or you can display who responded with what answer to really determine who did their work or not.

What might be some considerations when using this tool?

Not every student may own a cellphone. This is easily circumvented by allowing the poll to accept multiple answers and having multiple students respond via one phone.

Recommendations: is this a tool you would use or recommend for classroom use? Why or why not?

I would definitely use this for general assessments, quizzes, and even on more trivial matters that can be solved via voting. It allows for immediate assessment of comprehension (or whatever is being tested), and furthermore, it can even extend to democracy in action (I imagine political and government classes would enjoy this tool).