Poll Everywhere
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I love polls. They’re simple, informative, and easy to understand. If you want to get a quick overview of what people are thinking, then there’s really no better way to do it than a poll. The introduction of interactive polls on the Internet has enhanced what polls can do, and new methods of participation in and consumption of information are once again transforming the way that polls work. Poll Everywhere isn’t your standard online polling service because it includes support for text message voting.
You’ve seen text message voting before on television shows like American Idol, but now you can gather information in the same way with Poll Everywhere. A variety of paid accounts are available, but a free option does exist so that you can try out the service with a limited number of people. The polls are easy to create, and you can share and export the results in a variety of ways. Since people are becoming more attached to their cell phones, it only makes sense that you’d offer support for text message voting in addition to online voting, which is also available. This is a great tool for presenters and anyone else who wants to find out what the public is thinking.
2 Comments
Bill
April 3rd, 2008
at 6:09am
A poll that’s put together by anyone other than a professional and administered to anything but a random sample of voters is essentially useless. (Even a professional pollster has to be really careful.) Not only will it be impossible to evaluate statistically (with any accuracy) but it fails to take into account the fact that everyone who volunteers answers for random polls has an axe to grind.
That alone skews the answers, i.e. there may be 70% of readers who don’t give a darn, and don’t participate at all. If the questions are the least bit slanted (a problem with professionals, let alone non-pros) it will elicit response from one side but not necessarily equal response from the other.
In essence, the things are just about useless. Sorry.
Brad
May 6th, 2008
at 11:27am
Bill, your points cover just a small part of the problem that Poll Everywhere is trying to solve.
What if I want to ask 100 people, “What song should we play for the opening ceremony?” with the possible answers of “Clash of the Titans”, “Enter the Gladiators”, or “Rhapsody in Blue”?
What if you’re giving a presentation and at the end you want an idea of what people thought about the quality of the presentation? “Poor”, “Fair”, or “Great”?
How about educators? “What section of the chapter did you not understand?” “Mitochondria”, “RNA”, or “DNA”. Audience response polling systems, like Poll Everywhere, have been proven to help educators better understand their students comprehension.
Sure, people can load questions no matter what tool you give them; but to dismiss all polling tools as “useless” is a gross overstatement.