Poll Everywhere

I am having a hard time getting past my initial impression of Poll Everywhere. It is a really cool web tool. People love polls and what could be better than a poll that shows you the results almost instantaneously. When I gave my class presentation I was a but surprised that others saw a number of drawbacks. Here is a table that summarizes some of the concerns that were shared.

Plusses ++++++++++++	Minuses  --------------
Anonymous responses may encourage participation	…but anonymous responses may not lead to the most thoughtful  responses
Results appear quickly	…but texting takes some time
Great tool for formative assessment	…but must be planned ahead, it takes too much time on the spot to set up  poll
Basic polls are free	…but those who use it regularly will want to buy the premium features.

I was reminded that public school teachers are under tremendous pressure to fit a required curriculum into their allotted class time. Spending too much class time on a poll could be counterproductive, especially since some simple formative assessment can be done with raised hands. I imagine that once both students and teacher became more used to the polls that this activity would be less time consuming.

Poll Everywhere would make a really neat brainstorming tool, you can set up a poll to accept any response and this would probably take no more time than alternative methods. The tool could also be used as an activity for students to do at the beginning of class, as they are getting settled. In this way the teacher could check for understanding from homework or perhaps use the poll results to jump start class discussion. I find with my students that I think I have communicated clearly some important information but while they may have listened they did not commit it to memory. I am going to try using polls to promote better retention.

By the way, in case you are wondering how to do a table easily in blogger, sorry you can't. You have to make it in a word processing program and paste the code; here is a link that shows how. One unfortunate thing is that you cannot see what you have pasted in the compose view in blogger, it will only show up when you view the HTML.