Poll Everywhere

It is well suitable for class assignments where you want the class to see other participant's responses. It may not be too great when you have only a few responses. I believe it is more useful when there are a larger amount of participants. Also, there needs to be internet access.

The reasons to use Poll Everywhere:
1. Get rid of those clickers! They eat batteries, need constant maintenance, and ofter walk off at a monetary loss.
2. The pricing model is really easy to manage, the campus/company license will pay for itself even if you only have 5-10 active users.
3. Stop fighting mobile devices in your classroom and start leveraging them. Students can't mess around on social media, texting etc if they are in the PE app.

Then situations where Poll Everywhere wouldn't work as well:
1. Not great for multiple part, asynchronous polling, or data collection
2. Areas where there is a limited or absent internet connection.
3. Situations where an audience would lack basic technology such as a cell phone or laptop.

Poll Everywhere might be a good fit for institutions that have historically relied on "clicker" devices, but are now faced with financial and administrative challenges as clicker companies move to cloud/subscription-based services. Poll Everywhere helped us out of a bind by offering a less expensive alternative and allowing us to rely on the devices most students already have in hand. We also collaborated with Poll Everywhere on usage ideas for users who do not own mobile devices; they helped us consider how we might use other university technology and methods to ensure no student misses out, regardless of what device they own.

It's very handy in a classroom style setting. I'm interested in playing around with other features such as word clouds and other voting methods in order to catalyze more webinar discussion and participation. I think that it is a useful tool in enhancing and supplementing presentations, though with that said, it's only really handy when presenting new information or making a point in real time. Some business-related scenarios don't really lend themselves well to live response and too much of this I think could get distracting from an actual lecture or presentation (since you're ENCOURAGING attendees to be on their phones/computers).

Poll Everywhere is well suited for Do Nows, exit tickets, SAT review, constant check-ins during a lesson/activity, in formal assessments, surveys, and areas for student voice. It is not a formal program in which you should expect quiz/formal test like features. I have utilized Poll Everywhere in the English class while reading and analyzing a text. It affords students a backchannel to respond to questions and understandings, while voicing their opinion, and being able to defend their reasoning/examples to others.