Based on it's relevance to our curriculum and student interest, Poll Everywhere is a smashing success.
Most of the readers to this page already know how much interactivity and peer audiences matter to students. Many of us remember slogging through hand-made graphs when we were younger and the frustrations that our teachers expressed at incorrectly-reported rough data. By the time that students figured out that they were drawing their hash marks in the wrong region of their T Chart, it was too late to fix it becuase the period had already expired.
If your secure goal is teaching students how to interpret a graph, this free service can harness student interest and tie it to math and science. See how we used Poll Everywhere above along with a sample of our practice for an upcoming school-wide Sock Hop.
Showing posts with label polls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label polls. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Student-Moderated Live Blog
Yesterday after school a student invited me to a live blog that he moderates during the evening via wikimail. He uses CoverItLive, then posts the gadget text to his wiki site so that other students that he invites may participate.
When I jumped into the streaming discussion at about 7:15 last night, the conversation seemed to be centered around the results of the election. Most of the students were cheering on their preferred candidate (since the entire school participated in a mock election), talking about what it was like to be an election official, and tracking down other potential participants.
I am interested to read about last night's experience in their wiki posts later today, but I can say that the participating students' enthusiasm for the conversation pulled me in, too. I posted questions (Should 10 year-olds be able to vote?), shared links (Boulder Daily Camera Letters to the Editor submitted by fifth graders), and adding my feedback to the polls that were posted by the moderator.
This student (and the others that were participating) were constructing meaning of their world in a way that was fresh, engaging, and just-in-time; encapsulating all that I believe in as an educator.
Although the evening abruptly ended at about 8 o'clock with a private message to me saying that he "...needed to get off (of the computer due to parent-required rest)", I felt like the conversation would've continued into the night unabated.
Isn't that what happened here, here, and here?
When I jumped into the streaming discussion at about 7:15 last night, the conversation seemed to be centered around the results of the election. Most of the students were cheering on their preferred candidate (since the entire school participated in a mock election), talking about what it was like to be an election official, and tracking down other potential participants.
I am interested to read about last night's experience in their wiki posts later today, but I can say that the participating students' enthusiasm for the conversation pulled me in, too. I posted questions (Should 10 year-olds be able to vote?), shared links (Boulder Daily Camera Letters to the Editor submitted by fifth graders), and adding my feedback to the polls that were posted by the moderator.
This student (and the others that were participating) were constructing meaning of their world in a way that was fresh, engaging, and just-in-time; encapsulating all that I believe in as an educator.
Although the evening abruptly ended at about 8 o'clock with a private message to me saying that he "...needed to get off (of the computer due to parent-required rest)", I felt like the conversation would've continued into the night unabated.
Isn't that what happened here, here, and here?
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