PollEverywhere Icebreaker Poll Contest

PollEverywhere ran a contest last week: create the most engaging "icebreaker" poll to warm up an audience or classroom waiting for a presentation.  By entering this contest, I learned that this early student response system had more bells and whistles than I had realized prior.  Some 

  • GIFs: You can insert an animated .gif file into a poll question and scale its size (thumbnail to entire background image)
  • Images as answers: In lieu of text, you can insert an image (.jpg, .png, .gif) as a possible correct answer to a poll question
  • Fonts & Colors: You can manipulate the typeface of each poll element as well as the background color
  • Omit: You can delete elements like poll instructions
  • Clickable image: Users can touch an area of an image (map, chart, graph, table, art) as a correct answer. (See how I used clickable images in this interview I did with PollEv last month.)

I shared my two entries with my classes, and they were mildly hopeful that I had a shot at one of the prizes.  Last week I was informed that the Jaws poll I made would be featured in a list of other "ice breaker" polls, but, alas, I was not a winner, but my colleague @MrLBCP received an honorable mention for his Family Guy-inspired poll.

Entry #1: Jaws  (click for live poll)

Entry #2: Top Gun (click for live poll)

Both of these polls contain animated gifs. Click links above to see.  Do you have a go-to icebreaker poll?

Use Storify to capture a retrospective of your professional development timeline from Twitter

Today I realized that Storify could be used to represent a timeline of my professional development activities on Twitter.  Since my school requires a teacher portfolio that tracks classroom goals, teacher observations, technology implementation, student evaluations, etc., I think the addition of a timeline of the semester's PD goings-on would supplement the portfolio nicely.  By viewing the last several months of my posts on Twitter related to NoRedInk, Membean, Socrative, PollEverywhere, I can see how I've connected with other educators and developed relationships with edtech companies.

With easy account creation, Storify allows users to curate a retrospective of the Web, and I simply entered my @MrJohnDamaso Twitter handle and was presented with a stream of my Tweets and Retweets. I loaded a few hundred of them and captured them as a Storify that I can easily insert into my portfolio, Tweet out, or include here.