Hi Jennifer,
If you're going to have students text their responses, then Poll Everywhere is a good choice. Texting to Twitter would work, too, but would involve a little more work on the student's part (creating a Twitter account, connecting their cell phone to that account). However, the Twitter approach would mean your student responses would be more public--visible to each other, visible to the world, retweetable, able to be archived via hashtag, etc. You might not want their responses that public, but it does open up some interesting options. One such option: HootCourse (http://hootcourse.com/), which looks like a nice tool for aggregating and displaying course-related tweets. I'm thinking about trying it out this fall in my course.
The last study I saw indicated that something like 98% of students have cell phones nationwide and around half of them have smart phones. You may find that not only does every group have a student with unlimited texting, but every group has a student with a Web-enabled smart phone. If so, they'll be bringing their own Wifi in the room with them, so to speak!
And if that's the case, then you've got other response options, like ResponseWare from Turning Technologies (clickers via the Web), Google Moderator (http://www.google.com/moderator/), and the tool developed by the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/create.php).
For more of my thoughts on using classroom response systems (broadly defined) to handle student responses to open-ended questions, check out the "Free Response" category of my blog: http://derekbruff.com/teachingwithcrs/?cat=13.
Best,
Derek
--
Derek Bruff, Ph.D.
Assistant Director, Center for Teaching
Senior Lecturer, Department of Mathematics
Vanderbilt University
www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/
www.derekbruff.com/teachingwithcrs/
twitter.com/derekbruff
-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer Imazeki [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2010 4:16 PM
Subject: texting responses?
Hi all,
I've been pondering how to have groups simultaneously report responses
to open-ended application questions. My class will be 75 students (13
groups) and the classroom is much longer than it is wide. I was
considering having students use whiteboards but depending on how the
teams move their desks around, I'm not sure how easy it will be for
everyone to see everyone else's answer. I am hoping there will be at
least one laptop in each group but wifi in the building is sometimes
iffy (gotta love old state schools). It just dawned on me that if I
use Twitter or some other service that allows students to text to a
website, I could show their responses with the computer projector (and
the 160 character limit might actually be a good thing for keeping
students, and myself, focused on a specific choices). Has anyone had
students text their group responses in? Any suggestions on sites that
would allow this, other than Twitter? I've always been a bit hesitant
to do this in the past because I didn't want to require students be
able to text (or have to pay for it) but these days, I can't imagine
there won't be at least one person in each group who has unlimited
texting on their phone. Thoughts?
thanks!
Jennifer
****************************
Jennifer Imazeki
Department of Economics
San Diego State University
homepage: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~jimazeki/
Economics for Teachers blog: http://economicsforteachers.blogspot.com
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