Ways to use Polling in the Classroom
- Ask students how long they studied for a test.
- Check for understanding after a difficult topic.
- Use an initial poll to get discussion started at the beginning of class.
- Find out what your class knows about a subject before you cover it.
- Make classroom decisions (i.e., which book to read next).
- Get anonymous feedback on teacher instruction/strategy.
- Review assigned readings.
- Take attendance.
- Short quizzes or tests
- Stimulate conversation on a controversial topic.
Polling Apps
Kahoot is a game-based classroom response system that allows teachers and students to create and play quizzes, discussions, or surveys using any device in a web browser. You can ask thought-provoking questions and motive participation through game-based learning and rewards. Students answer questions in real time and play against each other to top the on-screen leaderboard. Educators can easily get an overview of the current knowledge levels of everyone in the room for formative assessment and can adapt their teaching accordingly.
Engagement and assessment is easy with Socrative, a free website that lets teachers create and deliver quizzes, quick questions, exit tickets, and even space races in real time on laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Questions can be multiple choice, true/false, or short answer and quizzes can be delivered so that they are student or teacher-paced. Results are instantly aggregated and displayed. Quizzes can be saved and shared with your colleagues and reports in Excel or PDF formats can be emailed, downloaded, sent to Google Drive, or saved for viewing later.
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Poll Everywhere lets you create multiple choice, free response, true/false, word cloud and text walls, clickable images, and discourse poll questions that can be delivered to any device that can send a text or through a web interface. Polls can be customized with colors, fonts, graphics, layouts, spacing, and messaging. Results can be displayed in a web browser, web site, or through a PowerPoint or Keynote slideshow.
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Google Forms is a Google Drive app that allows you to create documents that students can collaborate on in real time using smartphones, tablets and laptops. You can use Google Forms to run a survey, ask questions, create a test or quiz, or even create a team roster. Results are neatly organized in a spreadsheet for grading and record-keeping.
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Mastery Connect is a free app that allows students to take assignments, test, quizzes, and formative assessments using an iPod, iPad, or iPhone. Teachers can assess and track mastery of state and Common Core standards and share common assessments. Assessments can be created and uploaded in any format, such as Word, PDF, etc. and delivered automatically to the device.
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Want a web-based student response system that keeps students engaged and helps you to understand what they are thinking? Try Go Soap Box. This tool is free for less than 30 students and offers Q&A, polling, and even a Confusion Barometer. Students can also submit and vote for questions, allowing the best question to rise to the top for faster response from the teacher. Activity and grade reports can be downloaded by the teacher for grading later.
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Also free for up to 30 students, Nearpod allows you to create polls, interactive quizzes, open-ended questions, slideshows, and more and track student comprehension in real time. Teachers can create new slides or turn their PowerPoint, Google Slides, or PDFs into an interactive presentation. There are also free and paid interactive multimedia presentations from publishers and educators available on the site.
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Like using Google tools? Pear Deck integrates with Google and teachers can invite Classroom sections to participate in interactive presentations. Teachers can create a new deck or open existing PowerPoint, Google Presentations, or PDFs to add interactive formative assessments and questions or ask on the fly questions. Students can provide agree/disagree, thumbs up or down, draw on grid, picture, or blank screen, yes/no, true/false, a,b,c,d, short or long text answer, or enter a number answers. You can even add images or YouTube videos to questions. Pear Deck is free for 30 concurrent session participants or $100/year for the premium version.
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Poll Daddy is a free, quick, and easy way to create online polls, quizzes and questions. Students can use smartphones, tablets, and computers to provide their answers and information can be culled for reports. Teachers can choose from 19 different questions types and can add images, videos, and content from YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps, and more. Surveys can be sent via email, weblink, social media, or posted to a website or blog.
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