Using Texting to Assess

I am a big fan of The Teaching Channel videos and recently came across this video of Sarah Brown Wessling using Polleverywhere and Word Clouds to do quick assessments of student learning.  It is a really quick example of how basic texting can help with quick assessments at the beginning of class.

Phone Calling & Texting Poll With Excitem

I came across a new free polling website that is similar to Polleverywhere and SMSpoll.  The one addition that is nice is that you can call in votes too!  The site is called Excitem.  It has a free version (up to 50 responses).  The free version allows you to create a poll and then accept responses via text message, phone call, Twitter or Facebook.  This allows even more access for using students with to conduct polls and responses, as some do not have texting on their phone or even a cell phone (they could use a landline since Excitem does not use shortcodes, rather real phone numbers!).  While it does not seem to allow free response polls, it does have a place for general feedback that you can text in.  Definitely worth a look!