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Mentimeter
Pros: Huge range of options: generate questions, assign polls, get image feedback, create matrices, and more.
Cons: You can't import content, so it could take time crafting presentations.
Bottom Line: This tool's dynamic presentations strike a nice balance between information and interaction.
Mentimeter helps to solve the problem of always calling on the same students by getting feedback from the entire class. Start your day with a class poll to gauge mood, warm up, or ask an essential question. Use an Action Priority Matrix to determine which skills to teach first (involving students in instructional planning) and perform quick assessments using the quiz feature to anonymously check for concept mastery. Host a March Madness-style tournament, letting students vote weekly on their favorite books, scientists, characters, or historical figures. Crowdsource a word cloud to brainstorm character traits of famous leaders throughout history, innovative inventions, or solutions to real-world problems. Group discussions with questions related to themes or scientific discoveries are easily implemented.
Teaching a foreign language or ELL class? Ask questions in different languages to practice authentic classroom conversations. Or empower students to create interactive presentations and teach small groups or the whole class a skill or concept. Collect usable data in seconds while giving students a voice. Knowing their opinions will be asked or that questions will require their input along the way will encourage them to be more engaged in the lesson. Mentimeter is also a great tool for professional development, allowing presenters to engage participants while providing high-quality content.
Mentimeter is an interactive presentation tool that allows users to engage their audiences in real time. Teachers sign up using an email address or via Google or Facebook logins. After choosing Presenter or Audience pacing to get started, teachers simply click a button to begin designing a presentation. Users can choose from a variety of Events, selecting from options such as questions, polls, word clouds, reactions, and more. Audiences join from the app or via menti.com and enter a six-digit join code in order to see and respond to the questions.
Teachers can create up to five quizzes for free, but Events are limited to two per presentation. Exporting capabilities aren't available in the free version, so teachers who want to view data trends can either upgrade to Basic or use another tool -- such as Google Forms -- for questions where data collection is a priority. Teachers will find additional resources as well as support on the website via videos and a FAQ section, and great ideas about how others are using Mentimeter are abundant via social media.
Mentimeter helps to minimize the "death by PowerPoint" conundrum. The ability to create presentations where students ask and vote on questions, and take polls, allows teachers to involve their audience in ways that a traditional presentation can't. Letting students submit questions as you teach, using the Upvote feature as a gauge, teachers can use class time more effectively by addressing the needs of the many while still being aware of the needs of the few -- or even the one. The flexibility of the question types along with the ability to have students respond, see responses, and ask questions in real time, enables students to make relevant connections during a lesson rather than wait until after teachers present the information to be assessed. Student creation offers even more possibilities, allowing students to become teachers by creating interactive presentations for small groups or whole classes and bringing authenticity to classroom content.
The limitations of Events in the free version can be frustrating, but users can create multiple presentations in order to increase interaction, made easier via a one-click copy feature. It would be nice if users could upload slides or presentations from other platforms, lessening the burden of re-creating the wheel. However, PowerPoint users can add a Mentimeter plug-in, which allows them to add Events directly into their presentations. Another workaround for increasing interactivity is to create multiple presentations, structuring lessons so that each one builds upon the last.
Learning Rating
Worthwhile tool for formative assessment or brainstorming
Overall, even though you can only get two questions for free per mentimeter presentation, this has been sufficient for my use. I love that students use a join code and do not have to create an account. It is advantageous to me as a teacher to be able to sign in with Google. Kids find mentimeter engaging. It works as a tech-rich replacement for any stage of a K-W-L chart. For students who need access to class notes, I can export the mentimeter responses to a PDF and post it to Google Classroom. In this way all students can benefit from revisiting our ideas. My presentations are stored in my account so that I can reuse them. While there aren't a whole lot of options to make the presentations visually appealing, this is secondary for me.
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