Audience Polling

Audience Polling allows you to get instantaneous feedback from your audience, be it a faculty meeting or a classroom full of kids. This is just one of the many ways to incorporate mLearning into your classroom, and one way I intend to incorporate it into my library.

PollEverywhere is Free! Participants can respond via text, the web or Twitter. You have the option of "multiple choice" or free response polls, so really the possibilities are endless. Despite the name, it only works in the US.

Below is the poll I intend to use in the opening days of school to get an idea of what types of devices the students will bring to use in the classroom. This will help me and the teachers I work with plan activities based on the technology that is available to them. I will post the poll on the library website, and I will project it on the SmartBoards in classrooms when I collaborate with teachers.






It is important to me to know what devices students are using so that if I plan an activity that requires the use of an App, I can make sure the App, or a similar one, is available for the devices they will use.

Some other suggested uses for PollEverywhere:

• Use as a back channel for students to take notes during lectures and activities (think of the movies you might show where students may not always pay attention). Having a back channel allows students to refer back to it to study for quizzes and exams.
• Quick assessment of learning objectives to make sure your goals are being met.
• Quick assessment of whether students did their homework, so you know how much time you need to spend on old concepts.
• Bring entertainment to your room: for fun, put up a poll asking students if they want to see you perform a choice of entertaining things (such as singing a Justin Beiber Song, showing off your HipHop moves, hula hooping for an extended period of time...ok, the fact that I will be collaborating with two fantastic women with multiple talents who sang to their students at the end of last year gave me this idea!)
• Put up suggestions for field trips and allow the class to vote.
• Get feedback from your students about your lesson (I plan to do this a lot, because if they kids do not learn from the lesson, what was the point?)