As a final presentation for the afternoon, Athena Kennedy and Rachel Watson gave a presentation on Poll Everywhere (PE).
The presenters will share how they use Poll Everywhere to engage students in the classroom environment. Poll Everywhere is an online polling web application to which students can respond in a variety of ways including using their cell phonjes and via the web.
Athena pointed out that the University of Wyoming has a license for Poll Everywhere. Contact Christi Boggs for more information. You can have students register for PE so you can take attendance or grade responses. But you can also set up anonymous polls. Standard text message rates apply. Let students participate through the device of their choosing.
Rachel points out that the students seem more engaged if they can use the phone than when not. Athena uses polls to gauge group work. Great tool for measuring student opinion. Polls can be used to brainstorm ideas. You can also use PE to collect feedback on how things are going for a specific topic. Rachel uses it to collect feedback in a large lecture course. She also uses it to assess student knowledge so she can review the topic if necessary. Athena also uses it to play games, e.g., Jeopardy; the first answer up gets the question. Students can also create polls on the fly. Rachel uses it before an exam to ask students to poll on what topics are stressing students and follows up with a vodcast. She also uses it to schedule lab sessions. You can assess what students want to learn at the beginning of the semester, and do another poll at the end of the semester and compare the results.
Athena gave a demonstration on how to actually use PE. You may have to experiment with the keyword. You do not have to recreate a poll, you can simply reuse a poll when needed. It is possible to download the results as a PowerPoint or Prezi slide. Look and feel of the poll can be changed. PE also has a reporting feature. It is possible to create word clouds. Christi provided a good explanation of Wordle.
Another great presentation.
