Instructify

Can’t get your school district to pony up the cash for an expensive interactive whiteboard with a clicker system? Well, you can take care of the whiteboard part of that set-up here, but how to get the response system? Thanks to the folks at Poll Everywhere, all your students need is a cell phone.

• You can set up a poll with different responses.
• Then, have your participants send a text message to “41411″ with their vote (Cast ####) as a text message.
• You’ll then get results that you can share (on your Wii-remote interactive whiteboard).

Another online tool for polling using cellphones is Wiffiti, which shows results as a as a really neat visualization (shown above). Here’s how:

• Set up a screen at Wiffiti, then have participants call in
• Send a text messages to 25622 (this also spells 2LOCA).
• Start your message with the at sign ‘@’ and the screen code, for example txt: @myscrn2 Hello everybody!
• Sign your messages, txt name John Doe any time, and it will remember your name.

Wiffiti is better for open ended responses situations.

So stop confiscating your student’s cell phones, and start putting them to use in the classroom. -ALICE MERCER