Module 1-3 Survey Monkey Reflection

Module 1-3: Survey Monkey versus Poll Everywhere - Julie Busch and Carla McSwain

Survey Monkey

With this first exposure to Survey Monkey, we find that it is very simple to use. The format for inserting questions and answers is very user friendly. You can select from 20 different types of questions, you can use templates or create your own. It provides multiple choices for collecting the responses and data. Survey Monkey also allows options for manipulating the responses. The basic version appears to be free, but you can pay to upgrade if you wish. It seems to work best with email communication format.




Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere offers various options such as web technology, the ability to poll a live audience, and updating the results in your live presentations. This is basically an audience response system. It can also be embedded into a blog or a web page. It utilizes mobile phone technology as a communication format.


Comparison of Survey Monkey and Poll Everywhere

Survey Monkey’s strengths include being free and accommodating a more creative design possibility with color combinations and background styles. Poll Everywhere does seem to cost unless you have unlimited texting and we didn’t see any major design features and felt that it was not quite as user friendly as Survey Monkey. Survey Monkey cannot be embedded in a wiki or a blog, but Poll Everywhere can. You can only do Survey Monkey online.


Analysis of Uses for Our Teaching

Julie teaches younger children and therefore the Poll Everywhere cell phone connection would not be relevant. With high school students, Carla, however could utilize the cell phone capability for Poll Everywhere surveys. Survey Monkey could be used for classroom instruction across the curriculum and across the different grade levels to collect data for different reasons and lessons. For example, a kindergarten math lesson on graphing would be a great way to use Survey Monkey. You could survey them on their favorite colors, favorite food, etc., analyze the results and create a class graph from the results. Another good idea would be to make a family assignment using Survey Monkey, analyze the results and do a family night activity at school for the families. It could also be used as a tool for parental involvement. A teacher could use it periodically to “check in” with the parents about what is going on, what their expectations are, etc. Poll Everywhere could be used for the same reasons as Survey Monkey provided the audience had access to a mobile phone. Poll Everywhere would be a great instrument to use in a middle school or high school setting for an immediate audience response activity. For example, teachers could do a quick poll on how many students had veterans as relatives for a social studies class or send out kids during lunch to poll students for mock presidential elections. Really any poll activity would be possible and students could compare local polling information with national results. Now that we have been introduced to these technologies we can easily integrate them into our classrooms.

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