Any answers?

Thanks to a Twitter tweet from Teach42 I discovered Polldaddy. So, for instance, if I want to get some feedback about which posts people like best, I can easily include a poll:

Now, I know that the new Blogger templates allow you to add a poll, and as soon as soon as I get around to a long overdue refresh of this blog, I'll add one to try it out. However, Polldaddy also allows much more sophisticated questionnaires to be developed. For example, please answer my extended questionnaire.

There are many educational uses for polls like this. For instance, I mentioned in a lecture recently that I'd been at a workshop before a production on The Crucible. There was some discussion about whether we are supposed to think that John Proctor is still attracted to Abigail Williams. I thought that sort of thing would be a great thing to ask by a poll on a class blog. It would allow the teacher to get a quick idea of the range of opinion in a class and for pupils to see that it can be legitimate to interpret a scene in a number of ways.

Steve Dembo (i.e. Teach42) also drew my attention to Poll Everywhere. This looks like an interesting alternative to the audience vote style personal response systems that some schools are using. I was sceptical about the use of such voting systems until I tried using them in a lecture. I found them surprisingly useful. There are obvious issues about asking students to pay to vote in class but I think it is worth investigating further. If I try it, I'll try to remember to let you know how I get on. I have a blog post on voting systems that's been bubbling on the back burner for a few months now. Maybe this will inspire me to finish and post it. :-)

In the meantime, what do you think of using tools like Polldaddy? Can you see potential for your classes? If you are already using that type of tool, I'd love to hear if it worked.

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Technorati Tags: polls, questionnaire, Polldaddy, Poll Everywhere, Steve Dembo, Teach42, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog