I recently did a skype activity while also using
polleverywhere as a way to generate discussion.
The
Story ....
My health classes were just beginning a unit on
Addiction. To start the unit off I usually share a story about my wife who, in
her younger days, didn’t make such good decisions. She had gotten involved in the party
lifestyle at a young age and by the time she had reached her junior year she
had gotten into an alcohol related crash that totaled her car and broke her
right femur in 22 places.
After seeing how a lot of her friends were drinking AND
doing drugs she got rather bitter about her “consequence” when she only drank …
thus thrusting her into a more hardcore party mindset. By the next year she began experimenting with
drugs and even selling drugs. She wound
up getting into a 2nd accident where she crushed her right
ankle. There was irreparable damage to
her lower leg/ankle. This time she
“woke-up” so to speak and realized that she couldn’t keep living this kind of
life and made some positive changes.
The set up ....
The first class day, I share the entire story (pictures
and all) with the class. I usually do a
big dramatic rendition of the events as if these had happened to two different
people that I knew. I reveal at the end
this happened to the same person. It is
kind of entertaining because I get a lot of comments like “what is she
stupid?”, and “you’d think she would’ve learned?!” …. Then the big reveal … it
was my wife (I usually show some family pics and let them figure it out … it is
a shocking revelation. (My wife and I
have been married 17 years and I have been doing this for a while so I have had
my wife’s blessing. She would also admit
that in those days she wasn’t real bright so the comments aren’t offensive but
ring more truth than not.)
Usually after the presentation, I am flooded with all
kinds of questions about her shoe raise, what did her parents think, does she
still drink .. etc. Schedules don’t
always allow for her to come in, and she can easily get frustrated when a teen
looks at her with the “Yeah, but that is you … I am not THAT dumb” kind of
look ;-)
she isn’t as refined as I am … tee hee
The "Light Bulb" ....
Wondering how to make the personal experience a little
more convenient, I got the idea a year ago to use Skype!! Viola … we could have her in class and the
kids can interact and talk to her and she doesn’t have to leave the house. Some classes only need like 20 mins and
another might take the whole hour??
Most of the time I would get a few good questions and then kids would
sort of “time-out” so I wanted to generated more discussion. This year I started using Polleverywhere in
my classes and realized this was a perfect complement to a Skyping
activity. The kids can send questions
and I can monitor and read them in a flash.
It worked awesome! Kids could ask
questions and not worry if they were getting too personal and it allowed me to re-word
questions that might be confusing otherwise.
My next challenge may be to have
the presenter open the poll on another device so he/she can see the questions
as they come in. My wife, for example,
could have the poll up on her iPad while she is skyping us on the computer. That way she can see the questions as they
pop up in real time and can answer them accordingly.
I realized that with the Flipped classroom model gaining
popularity and classes starting to use Skype and other video chatting platforms
it seems to be a perfect complement to each other. Even with a guest speaker, it allows kids to
text questions during a presentation as they think of them, and I (or the
presenter) can answer them as they come in.
It can also be a check at the end to see if all the questions got
answered in the presentation. I was also
able to use the Mobile app so I can monitor the poll right on my smartphone and
not be tied to a computer. It worked
very efficiently. If your presenter has
this technology, I think it could be a very engaging way to interact with a
presenter.
I hoping to schedule a few more Skype sessions with some
“experts” in the health & Fitness field next semester and I truly think
that Polleverywhere is a great tool to use to help draw questions out of
students. Maybe this is old news for
those out there using technology, but using skype and Polleverywhere in tandem
was a great success. So if you are interested, give it a try.
FYI … The kids like the Tweet option in polleverywhere
and the pollev.com/ feature seems to be the easiest as you can “push” your
polls to mobile devices. Just my
observation … J
My health classes were just beginning a unit on
Addiction. To start the unit off I usually share a story about my wife who, in
her younger days, didn’t make such good decisions. She had gotten involved in the party
lifestyle at a young age and by the time she had reached her junior year she
had gotten into an alcohol related crash that totaled her car and broke her
right femur in 22 places.
After seeing how a lot of her friends were drinking AND
doing drugs she got rather bitter about her “consequence” when she only drank …
thus thrusting her into a more hardcore party mindset. By the next year she began experimenting with
drugs and even selling drugs. She wound
up getting into a 2nd accident where she crushed her right
ankle. There was irreparable damage to
her lower leg/ankle. This time she
“woke-up” so to speak and realized that she couldn’t keep living this kind of
life and made some positive changes.
Wondering how to make the personal experience a little
more convenient, I got the idea a year ago to use Skype!! Viola … we could have her in class and the
kids can interact and talk to her and she doesn’t have to leave the house. Some classes only need like 20 mins and
another might take the whole hour??
Most of the time I would get a few good questions and then kids would
sort of “time-out” so I wanted to generated more discussion. This year I started using Polleverywhere in
my classes and realized this was a perfect complement to a Skyping
activity. The kids can send questions
and I can monitor and read them in a flash.
It worked awesome! Kids could ask
questions and not worry if they were getting too personal and it allowed me to re-word
questions that might be confusing otherwise.
My next challenge may be to have
the presenter open the poll on another device so he/she can see the questions
as they come in. My wife, for example,
could have the poll up on her iPad while she is skyping us on the computer. That way she can see the questions as they
pop up in real time and can answer them accordingly.
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