Create classroom or competition polls with Mentimeter

The dream of most technology savvy teacher have a dream that some day they can use those awesome and easy to use "Clickers" in their classrooms.  I am jealous of anybody who has them and want to congratulate them.  However, there are other alternatives to having clickers to get instant feedback from your students.  One of them that my good friend Matt Runyon has been blogging about is Socrative, which I am a huge fan of and hope that company succeeds, because it saves a bunch of hardware costs.

While not as advanced and with as many options as Socrative and "Clickers" there is yet another awesome instant response system available for free call "Mentimeter."

What can you do with Mentimeter?

• You can easily create polls and surveys that visibly show the results to your classroom.
• You can create multiple choice questions with many choices.
• Questions can be answered with any mobile device if it has internet capabilities.
• No registration is required.

What are some disadvantages of Mentimeter?

• So far it only allows for multiple choice, but that really is OK because the site is set up as a polling site.
• Some sites, for money allow you to just text the answer.  This site doesn't, but then those other sites charge money and Mentimeter does not.

Here is an example of what the public would see as voting occurred.  Why don't you give it a test try by typing in the address at the bottom of the page and see the results add up.  You can also get there quicker at this moment by clicking the link to my poll.  http://vot.rs/11540 .  It doesn't matter what you answer, just have fun watching the poll.

Tutorial

1.  Go to www.mentimeter.com

2.  Right away you get to type in your question.

3.  Type in your different choices and answers.

4.  Choose how you want your graph to visually look to your audience.

5.  Off to your right hand side you will see a "To presentation" button.  Click it.  

6.  Give your audience/students the address at the bottom of your graph.

7.  Off to the right hand side you will see four faded icons.  "Edit" allows you to edit your poll.  The "Fullscreen" icon will display to your audience just the graph and make it look a little less than a website and more like a presentation.

8.  The "Share" button will will give you an link to your poll and presentation.  You can also get your embed code so that you can embed your results inside of your blog or website like I did at the top.

9.  The "Settings" button will allow you to "reset" your poll.  This is nice for those planning on using it in class as you can reset the results for each class period of the day.  You can also use the "Close Poll" option to finish the poll.

10.  When your audience/students go to the link that you provided them they will chose an answer and then click the "Submit" answer button.

11.  I tested the ability to take the quiz again and you can see that it wouldn't let me do so.

12.  Here is what the presentation view would look like.  The nice thing is that you don't have to refresh your screen to see the results.  They are live and in real time.  It is awesome.  Good luck and have fun using Mentimeter.