Ask and Ye Shall Receive

So, Polls Everywhere initially gave me some trouble because several things on the site don't work the way they should. It's ok though because I found work arounds and I still think that Polls Everywhere is a useful classroom feature. I learned that there is no free software to put the polls in a Keynote or Powerpoint for Mac. What they have is a floating app that works in tandem with Keynote and Powerpoint. However, because it's not actually attached to the Powerpoint or Keynote you can't just embed the presentation into the website and have the polls show up too. However, they do have software that works with Prezi. I figured that this was the cleanest (and actually the only) way to embed the polls and the presentation. I think it still fulfills the assignment because all of the polls are technically embedded into the website and so is the presentation. (Plus it was cool to integrate two technologies I learned.)

• What instructional problems could you use this technology for? How would you use this in your classroom?
• This could be used instead of iClickers in class to assess student understanding
• Teachers could use it to get students thinking about their subject outside of the classroom by assigning polls that relate to their everyday life that they can just answer on their cell phones. I recommend the open answer polls for things like this and this can help students relate things?
• It can also be used for class evaluations - like I did - so teachers can see what their students actually think about their class.
• What kind of obstacles might prevent you from using this technology?
• Some students may not have cell phones or unlimited texting. This makes it hard to assign polls outside of class.
• Many features that are useful for teachers are not included in the free version. Like sending back feedback after someone takes the polls or creating correct/incorrect answers.

You can find the page on my website with my Prezi of polls here. If you want to vote on my poll text (or enter on PollEv.com) 251329 and the answer's number/letter. It's fun because you can watch the embedded Prezi, vote, and watch the graphs change.