Phone Calling & Texting Poll With Excitem

I came across a new free polling website that is similar to Polleverywhere and SMSpoll.  The one addition that is nice is that you can call in votes too!  The site is called Excitem.  It has a free version (up to 50 responses).  The free version allows you to create a poll and then accept responses via text message, phone call, Twitter or Facebook.  This allows even more access for using students with to conduct polls and responses, as some do not have texting on their phone or even a cell phone (they could use a landline since Excitem does not use shortcodes, rather real phone numbers!).  While it does not seem to allow free response polls, it does have a place for general feedback that you can text in.  Definitely worth a look!

iVoted new Free SMS polling

I have recently been using a resource called iVoted. It is for live polling, similiar to Polleverywhere, LetsGoVote and SMSpoll. iVoted has a free package (up to 25 votes per poll with unlimited polls). The polls must be multiple choice, but they are very easy to generate. In addition one can respond to the polls via email, sms text, twitter, or the web. There are some options with voting and results.

Free SMS Polling Tool For UK and Australia

A new mobile polling tool has just been introduced called SMSpoll. SMSpoll is similiar to the fantastic Polleverywhere (which I believe is US only right now). SMSpoll has a free account which allows for 25 votes per poll (enough for many individual classes) and 500 new polls per month. While the purpose is to take advantage of student owned cell phones for the 20% who do not have cell phones, they can vote on the web. The polls can also be downloaded into PowerPoint and embeded into a website/wiki/blog. You can also download the results in an excel spreadsheet. One additional feature that SMSpoll has is an auto-stop that you can schedule for polling (for example you can schedule a class poll to automatically stop at the end of class without having to go back to the website to close the poll). You also (unlike Polleverywhere) can get the results of the poll on your mobile phone! Of course you do have to pay extra for this feature. The template to create the polls is very easy to use. The major drawback is that you can an Australian number to text results to. It seems to work in the UK and Australia, and online web-based voting in most other countries. Here is a sample that I made below with web voting, feel free to try it!

Classroom Applications of mobile polling

KWL's

It can be used to generate KWL's inside or outside of class. You can create polls about an upcoming topic to find out what students know (K). You can create polls about an upcoming topic to find out what student's want to learn (W). Finally you can create polls at the end of a unit to find out what student's have learned (L).

Voting

You can use the polls for voting on topics for discussion/study. Students can develop mock elections as well.

Feedback

Students could create polls to get feedback after they have completed a presentation. They could also generate polls to use as feedback during their presentation (audience participation).

What will Happen?

Teachers could create polls concerning what students think will happen in a book, scientific phenomenon, or historical event. For example, before knowing the outcome of A Separate Peace, students could vote on what they think will happen. Or students could vote on how many "eggs" will break in their gravity experiment.