I’ve written about alternatives to proprietary clicker systems in the past. Usually when I mention those alternatives, I mention using text messaging. However, in the last three weeks I’ve presented in three different countries. In two of those countries I wasn’t able to text (at least not without incurring ridiculous charges) so the only tool for polling students that I showed was Socrative.

Socrative is a free student response system that allows you to gather feedback from students through any Internet-connected device. One of my favorite aspects of Socrative is the variety of ways in which you can pose prompts and questions to your students. The Space Race feature has been a hit everywhere that I’ve gone in the last three weeks. The Space Race feature allows you to create virtual teams for answering questions or prompts. The screen students see masks names, but as the teacher you can see your students’ names and download a report of students’ responses. Learn more about the Socrative Space Race in the post I wrote about it in January.