OMG! Texting in Class?: SMS messaging’s cool for school with these polling apps
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I’m a rule breaker. Two years ago when my school had a strict no-cellphones policy, I encouraged my students to use their mobile devices in class. Why’d I do it? To get students and their parents more involved in the lesson.
The first time I had students take out their cell phones was in my civics course, during a discussion about a property tax referendum on our state’s fall ballot. I hadn’t planned to have them use their phones, but when I saw a girl attempt to text under her desk, I asked her who she was messaging. “My mom,” she replied. “Well, ask your mom what she thinks about the referendum,” I said. And sure enough, her mother responded. Of course, my other students wanted to do the same thing. Soon we had responses from 10 parents and an uncle, which enhanced our classroom discussion. That’s when I knew I was on to something good.
To make a long story short, after that civics class, I walked into my principal’s office to explain what I had done. (By the way, if you ever break a rule in school, just go tell the principal yourself rather than let him or her find out later. Trust me, it’ll make life easier.) Not only was he okay with what I had done, but he also wanted to hear about other ways we could use cell phones. I’m happy to say that this year, cell phones are allowed in my school.
In my first experience of having students and parents text responses, we simply tallied them on a whiteboard. That worked for us because the issue at hand wasn’t a terribly contentious one. Had we been discussing a more controversial topic, we would have wanted to collect responses anonymously. Fortunately, there are a couple of Web-based tools for doing just that.
One of the most popular platforms for collecting group data via mobile device is Poll Everywhere. Just post questions on your unique Poll Everywhere survey, then give your audience the number to text with their responses. The survey results are available almost instantly. If you use it in class, connect to an LCD projector to display the results on your screen so students can view the them as they come in. A free Poll Everywhere account allows you to collect responses from up to 30 people.
Text the Mob is another polling service that lets you survey your audience via mobile device. First, create an account and write your questions. Text the Mob then provides your audience with a number to text their response to. Results appear immediately on a large results screen suitable for projection. The one caveat on the free plan is that an ad will appear on your results page. With a free account, Text the Mob lets you post up to three questions per poll and receive up to 50 responses. That’s 18 more responses than Poll Everywhere provides with their free plan for K–12 educators.
Please keep in mind that while Text the Mob and Poll Everywhere offer free services, respondents may incur text-messaging charges from their mobile service providers.
I know, many of you might be saying, “Yeah, but cell phones are banned at my school.” If that’s the case, you can still collect survey data through a poll placed on your school or library blog or website. Most blog platforms offer some type of poll or survey widget that you can install. But if you don’t find one to your liking, there are many others available on the Web for free. A few that I particularly like are Micro Poll, Poll Mo, and Urtak.
| Author Information |
| Richard Byrne (richardbyrne@freetech4teachers.com), a high school social studies teacher, writes the award-winning blog Free Technology for Teachers. |
