When I was in class with this one teacher he would always correct me with emphasis for the website PollEverywhere, calling it PollsEverywhere.
Not really a big difference, but the drawn out S sound sounds mocking after a while. I had already been using the site before (we don’t need a week on it, thanks), so I knew what I was saying, but je consistently would look right at me and say ‘PollsEverywhere’.
I’m not going to meet him in person for class anymore, which is awesome because he has other shortcomings as a professor, but i hope one say someone shows him he’s been saying this one thing slightly wrong because he’s not really picking up on subtlety.
5 Technology Tools for Optimizing Classroom Discussion
Joshua C. Elliott, Ed.D.
Assistant Professor of the Practice and Director of Educational Technology, Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions, Fairfield University
Educational technology is a valuable classroom tool, but budgetary constraints can hinder availability. Some school districts have the ability to provide devices to every student, while other districts struggle to provide one operational computer lab. Listed below are some technology resources that can enhance classroom discussion despite the budgeting issues that many districts face.
Technology Tools
Each of these tools are free for at least an initial account. This means that there may be a cost for large numbers of participants, but not in most cases. Educators should consider the strengths and weaknesses of each tool as it relates to their teaching or course objectives when trying to choose which tool to incorporate into their teaching. The tools discussed are, GoSoapBox, Kahoot, Socrative, PollEverywhere, and TodaysMeet.
1. GoSoapBox is a quiz tool, but it has other capabilities also. The program works through the Internet instead of through an app so the type of device the user has is not a factor.
There are four main features to GoSoapBox; a confusion meter, quiz tool, polls, and discussions. The confusion meter appears as thumbs up and thumbs down icons. Students can click on a thumbs up or thumbs down icon to indicate whether they understand the content at any particular time. The program defaults to thumbs up until a student clicks on the thumbs down icon. On the administrative side, there is a counter to indicate the number of students online. When students click the thumbs down icon, it is indicated on the screen on a separate counter for students marked as confused. This feature allows students to indicate confusion with anonymity and as a result, students are more likely to admit their confusion.
The quiz feature allows the user to create short multiple choice or short answer questions. Quiz results can be downloaded in an Excel file for review. This can be useful when trying to identify student comprehension or needs. Students do not have to enter their names so the teacher would need to review for themes rather than pinpointing individual student progress.
Polls are also an option in GoSoapBox so teachers can pose questions to students and gauge student opinions on debate topics. The discussion option allows open-ended questions to serve as a starting point for classroom discussions. The nice thing about GoSoapBox is that it operates as a system. Each option can be locked and unlocked at any time by the teacher for participants to access. This is nice for someone who really wants to provide access to a few different tools in one lesson.
2. Kahoot is another great quiz tool. The thing that makes Kahoot stand out is its ease of use and level of customization. The program allows for quizzes, surveys, and discussions like several others. The discussion tool is limited however. It only allows for a few clickable answers. One major advantage of Kahoot is the ability to share resources. Kahoot quizzes can be shared to a central database for others to access. At the time of this article, there are 5.6 million Kahoot assessments available. Pictures and videos can also be embedded into both the overall quiz and the individual questions.
The features of Kahoot provide opportunities for formative assessment and discussions points. Focusing on Kahoot’s quiz feature, teachers can give an in class quiz and discuss the answers to questions that give multiple students trouble. I like to use Kahoot to review for tests. The students enjoy it and get competitive. I let them choose whatever silly name they want to compete with as long as it is appropriate. Kahoot provides immediate feedback for each question and tallies of how many people selected each answer. This is nice because you can briefly stop to discuss any questions where several students were wrong. Students can also create their own Kahoots for fun to stump their classmates or to use at the end of a presentation they give.
3. Socrative offers several assessment resources. They are a general quiz feature, quick questions, space race, and exit ticket. Quizzes can be created or imported from an Excel file and quiz results can be downloaded in an excel file. The same question options exist for the quick question option, but the teacher provides the question verbally or can display it somewhere in the classroom for students to see. Space race is a timed quiz that allows students to challenge each other to a race. The student who answers the questions quickest and most accurately wins. It is called space race because the results can be displayed on the board as space ships racing toward a finish line. It is not unusual for teachers to use exit ticket activities to bring closure to their classes. The exit ticket feature in Socrative is an adaption of this activity. Three questions are posed to students in a Socrative exit ticket activity:
1 How well did you understand today’s material? (multiple choice)
2 What did you learn in today’s class? (short answer)
3 A third question provided by the teacher. (short answer)
The exit ticket feature is cool to use at the end of the class because it offers a nice mix of preformatted questions and you still get to add your own. It is also much easier to go through student answers on the computer in Socrative or in a downloaded Excel file.
Socrative has two apps for download in addition to the Internet-based version, a teacher version and a student version and is user friendly — a classroom code is needed to participate.
4. PollEverywhere started as a resource that allowed user to poll audiences live. Audience members participate through their cell phones by texting a code to a particular number. I first saw it used as a beginning of the year icebreaker for teachers. The capabilities of PollEverywhere have expanded dramatically since then. Users can now access PollEverywhere through a website and Twitter in addition to text messaging. In addition to polls; open-ended questions, clickable images, and brainstorming exercises can be created. Open-ended questions allow for word walls and clouds. This feature is useful to initiate course discussions by creating a word cloud to brainstorm ideas. Users can upload an image and embed clickable hot spots. Images, including pictures and maps, can be uploaded for users to view on their devices. The user can click either anywhere on the image or on predetermined hot spots.
PollEverywhere enables the teacher to occasionally poll students about their opinions of discussion topics. Some students are more likely to express their true opinions without fear of judgment by their peers.
5. TodaysMeet is a backchannel tool created to allow structured conversations to occur in class without interrupting the class. This allows students to discuss questions on the side without breaking the flow of class discussion. Access information can be given to students through a short URL or a QR code. A TodaysMeet widget can also be embedded in many websites, including WordPress, Google Sites, and Moodle. By creating a formal space for side or backchannel discussions, the teacher can reduce the frequency of unproductive or unrelated conversations. Conversation transcripts can be downloaded when finished for review and accountability.
TodaysMeet is a helpful resource with several advantages, but it needs to be used on a regular basis to be productive. It is more complicated than other tools on this list, so students need a proper introduction to the resource to use it effectively.
TodaysMeet is great for high-level classes where discussions move quickly. Students in these classes can check with each other quickly and easily about something they missed. Several TodaysMeet discussions can be created for students to keep track of what is happening in each group.
Each of the tools discussed in this article can be a great resource in the classroom. Some things need to be considered to be as effective as possible. Think about why you are using it, and what results you hope to get. There are differences between the tools that can help you decide which to use. One tool may have certain options that make it more valuable to you.
There are countless educational technology resources, and many of them are great. Using too many in the classroom, though, can confuse students and slow down learning to a crawl. The goal is to optimize student learning, not use as many tools as possible. Think about which tool will work best for you and what you hope to accomplish by implementing it into your teaching. This will increase the probability of success in using technology in your classes.
Sites that might jive with your university teaching
The options for using social media in the classroom certainly are vast. Here are a few select sites that can be used to augment your traditional class design. Students are using many of these sites anyway, consider using them to your advantage!
One note I will make is that with most of these social media sites, your life will be made much easier if you communicate to your students that they need to include one unique, mutually agreed upon phrase in the title of their post (or as a hashtag in twitter) to make them easily searchable.
twitter - See post below for more information
youtube - An important hub for silly cats and daring people, but also for education! Students can submit videos for assessment, or instructors can post interesting/ relevant explanatory videos on the OWL site or their own blog.
screencast - The password protected alternative to youtube
polleverywhere - The one that allows you to text/ use the web to make polls in real time on a powerpoint slide. And seriously - who texted the word "crotch"? I was going to stage something mildly inappropriate as a demonstration of the downside of this social media technique, but forgot, so that was a real help.
camtasia - Sorry folks - it's a trial only- I made my video from today in the trial period. Let me know if you know a free alternative!
pinterest - I didn't talk about this in interest of time, but pinterest can be used as a learning tool as well. I'm not sure it's as widely applicable as the others, but perhaps you can think of a way to use it? I've seen it used as a way to "collect" art of different moods or styles. I will post the link soon!
Greg Kulowiec addresses many teacher-concerns about using cell phones in the classroom to implement tools like Polleverywhere (violating school cell phone policy, students without cell phones, and questioning strategies). If you have considered using Polleverywhere in your classroom, give this post a read.
