Mentimeter is a website used for polling your pupils or for getting feedback from them. I found out about this website from Richard Byrne of the Free Tech 4 Teachers website. It’s a really easy audience response website and I’ve used this site with my 1st Class pupils with no difficulties. I also demonstrated the website to the CESIMeet in Thurles last weekend and people seemed to like its simplicity and ease of use.
The site itself is basic enough, but that is part of its appeal. There is no need to sign up or register or become a member. It’s a three step process.
1. Create the question you wish to ask your pupils on the homepage and click “Create Question”.
2. On the next screen, enter your multiple choice answers to the question (multiple choice is the only type of feedback allowed at the moment) and select one of the two available themes. Click “Save and Start Presenting”.
3. The next screen is the bar chart which will receive the answers from your pupils. Leave this on screen for pupils to see the results.
You will notice that there is a Question ID number in the top left hand corner of the screen. Tell your pupils to go to http://vot.rs/ and enter this Question ID on the screen. When this is done, the pupils will be presented with the question and the multiple choice answers. They make their choice and click “Submit”. Their answers will be registered automatically on the teacher’s screen in bar chart format.
I used this website with my Rang I pupils who have access to iPod Touches,. However, pupils can also use Laptops or PCs to record their answers. Only one response per machine is usually permitted. I used the website as a method of revising bar charts. I asked various questions like “What is your favourite fruit?” and “What is your favourite football team?” and when the responses were received we revised the language of bar charts: Which was the most popular fruit?; Which was the least popular?; How many pupils like pears?; How many more people like pears than apples? etc.
On the bar chart screen there is a “Share” button. This allows the teacher to save the URL for the administration page for the question, the URL for the results page. There is also an iFrame HTML code to allow the results page to be embedded in a Blog or Website. All in all, this is a relatively easy pupil response website to use. You can follow Mentimeter on Twitter. This is Richard Byrne’s video explaining the site:
