Get Students Sharing Opinions

This is a simple site with both iOS and Android apps that enables students to share and compare opinions.

Pinion has a range of images each one with a gapped sentence on. Students can complete the sentence any way they choose to share their opinions.

The opinions can also be posted through social media, so this can work well if  you have a Facebook Group too.

Once they enter their opinion students can see what other people have posted.
This is a great way to stimulate quick discussions and an idea that you can easily replicate in the classroom with images.

This site is best suited for adult learners as some of the sentences related to alcohol and other more mature topics, so be sure to check for suitability.

I hope you enjoy using Pinion with your students.

You can find 100 + more tools and resources like this in my ebook Digital Tools for Teachers - Second Edition or if you want to train other teachers to use these kinds of tools check out the Teacher Trainers’ Edition.

My Books:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Create Quick Online Polls

Vorbeo must be one of the quickest and easiest poll creators I've ever seen. All you need to do is to go to there website at: http://vorbeo.com/

Type in your question add different answers each one on a new line, choose your colour and size etc. As you do that, a code is generated lower down on the page.

When you are ready you simply copy the code into your web page or blog and publish it.


Users simply click on their answer and click vote and they are taken to a new page to see the results. try this one to see how it works:

Do you use technology in your classroom?

Yes - every day
Yes - sometimes
No - never
No - not very often
No but I get my students to use it outside the classroom

This is really no frills stuff, but it is simple, quick and easy and also free. You don't even need to register or part with your email address. All user responses are anonymous.

This is a great tool to use with students

• All responses are anonymous so you can use this to get some honest feedback on your teaching if you are doing action research.
• You can create opinion polls based on videos from YouTube (just embed the video and poll questions in your blog page) or text.
• You can get students to create their own research polls for their peers and then discuss the results in class.
• You can use it to get some feedback on your blog.
• Students who write blogs can use it to get quick responses from readers.
• You could even use it as a comprehension check for online text audio or video activities that you create for your students.

You can create a number of questions and embed the code for each one in the page, so you aren't limited to just one question, but you are limited in terms of giving students some response to their answer. They will only see how other people have responded so they won't know whether they are right or wrong.

I think this is a great simple tool that is really easy to use. I hope you find a good use for it. So what do you think?

Will you use Vorbeo

Yes
No
Maybe

Related links:

• Survey Creation Tool for Students
• Create a Quick Discussion Forum
• Videos for Global Issues Lessons
• Education for the Global Economy
• Tackling political issues
• Video debating website
• Express Your Opinions

Best

Nik Peachey

Survey Creation Tool for Students

Ask 500 People is a really simple single question survey tool. You have to register, but once you do you can make a survey in just a few minutes.
You just give your survey a name, then decide on the type of questions you want to ask.

There are four types

• Simple Yes / No
• Multiple choice answers
• Clines (degrees of agreeing vs disagreeing)
• Image select (user select one of a range of images)

One of the nice things about it is that users can leave comments if they register and so you can get information on the people who give the answers (gender, age etc.)
Perhaps what I like best of all for students though is that you can also see on a Google map where the answers came from.

This is great if you are getting students to create surveys as they will get a really genuine feeling that they are able to get opinions from around the world, which must be so much more motivating than just asking the person next to you in class.

There are also some very good, though many quite controversial, questions already up there and you could get you students discussing some of those and answering them in class and then comparing their opinions with some of those on the website and perhaps even posting their opinions (Check out the questions you use first in case their is anything offensive). Also great for doing Business English classes on market research and thinking of questions they could ask about products.

• You can see a list of 'hot' questions here.

The other nice thing is that you get a choice of embed codes to either add the survey to a site page or sidebar as well as a hyperlink you can share.


Here you can see the page widget with results and comments.

I hope you and your students enjoy it. Here you can find quiz based activities for students.

Related links:

• Create a Quick Discussion Forum
• Videos for Global Issues Lessons
• Education for the Global Economy
• Tackling political issues
• Video debating website
• Express Your Opinions

Best

Nik Peachey

Education for the Global Economy

There's some really interesting new stuff on Big Think with a number of experts giving their opinions on the American education system and the need for reform.

A lot of the opinions are connected with internet use and how well state schools are preparing their students for the demands of the 21st century.

It's all very US focused, but does have resonance around the world, so well worth a look and could be useful to get your students thinking a bit.

Related links:

• Tackling political issues
• Video debating website

Best

Nik Peachey