Yes! Text in Class!

  If you have teenagers at home, you know that their cell phones are used as watches and as texting devices. Occasionally, they're used as  phones, if they have to talk to you, the parent!  In that respect, our college students are not much different than younger teens.  There are few students who do not have cell phones in class, and they use them to text.  If you want to read more about cell phone use at every age, you might want to read an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal, called  Y U Luv Text, H8 Calls, by Katherine Rosman.  Obviously, texting is here to stay, at least for now, so, let's join the party!

  One way to put the cell phones to good use in the classroom is to use Poll Everywhere. As the name implies, Poll Everywhere is a polling system that can be used for quick interactions.   Poll Everywhere is free for a group up to 30 people, and can involve your students and let them use their cell phones at the same time.  Poll Everywhere can be at as a quick substitute for Clickers, which have become more popular in our classes. 

  Once students have texted their answers, either from their cell phones or computers, you can show the results live via the Internet or a PowerPoint slide.  An Internet connection is necessary for this, of course.  The following video gives you an overview of how easy it is to use Poll Everywhere.



There are a couple of limitations to Poll Everywhere.  It seems that you can create just one question at a time, but you can quickly move from one question to another.  Also, students must have access to a cell phone or computer connected to the Internet to participate. 

Poll Everywhere is something I think would be a good ice-breaker at the beginning of class or a quick wake-them-up activity after 20 minutes or so of lecturing.  Students could also create test questions for the their classmates to answer.

Once you've tried Poll Everywhere, comment on the blog so we can learn from your experiences.

Have a great week.