Gaining Students attention

After reading more into what wordle and poll everywhere was, i noticed that the teachers that were using it were using it for a better reaction from their students. Using Wordle to help describe themselves and using Poll everywhere to allow the students imput on how they felt about a subject. Wordle talkes random words put into it and displays the words in a fun and colorful way. Poll everywhere takes a question and does exactly what the title of the site is called and makes a poll of the question.

As part of our introduction for exploring wikis as a learning tool and social media as tools for learning, I integrated a Poll Everywhere multiple choice poll asking students to vote on the form of social media or social networking they used most often.  I created a tab for each class period (5th and 7th) for student voting using LibGuides and integrated widgets for the polls into each page.   I gave students the option of either texting their responses, using the mobile phone voting feature, or for those who did not have cell phones, a web-based voting option.  An undercurrent of excitement and surprise pulsed throughout the lab as students looked at me in disbelief and asked, “Can we really use our cell phones to vote?”   I smiled with great pride when one student looked at me and said, “What kind of teacher are you?”  Not only did this activity engage students in conversation and participation in the learning activity, but it also set the tone for the semester that we would be creating learning experiences different from the typical mainstream classroom.

What this teacher did was 1 got the students excited about being able to use cellphones so they now think that teacher is cool. 2 because the students could use something that they were familure with, they were more involved. and 3 beause the students were not doing the same old boring things that they were used to, they were able try something new and really be excited about doing it.