Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere is a great, free website that lets you create questions and have your audience respond. It is web based so you need access to the internet, however your audience has a little more flexibility. They can vote online via computer or other hand-held device (iPod Touch, etc) or they can text in their answers from cell phones. It is a quick, easy way to get some audience participation and feedback. You can create multiple questions for multiple surveys. If you are familiar with Turning Point it is a similar concept. There are advantages with using Turning Point over Poll Everywhere, however it is free and you don't need to check out additional equipment. Poll Everywhere questions are great for getting quick feedback from your class that you don't need to track. It could be a nice way to keep your students on their toes to always be listening. They will never know when you will ask them to vote in their responses on your questions!

Turning Point will track your answers (who answered what) and export them into Excel. You also have all the equipment you need on the cart in your building and don't need internet access for it to work. If you are using the polls for a quiz or grade Turning Point is still the way to go. However, if you want a quick survey from the audience Poll Everywhere is a nice alternative! If your students are already in the computer lab you can have them vote right from the computers. Or, if you are working with older students that have cell phones (or adults) they can text the answer in! Of course, you would want to let your participants know that their cell phone service providers will charge them for sending a text just as they normally would. Lets face it though, for better or worse many teens already have texting plans and it won't cost any extra to send a text to Poll Everywhere.

If you want to check it out, go to:
http://www.polleverywhere.com/

I have some handouts from our last SOITA Tele-Tech Tuesday presentation that I would be happy to share with you. You will need to set up a username and password to use the site. You will be able to save your surveys and copy/paste your old questions to make new ones! Let me know if you have any questions.