Earlier this week I received an email from someone who was looking for way that students could respond to prompts during a slide presentation without the teacher having to keep a separate window open all the time. Two options immediately came to mind. My first suggestion was to try ParticiPoll. My second suggestion was to try using the commenting feature in Google Slides.
ParticiPoll is a service that you can use to add interactive polls to your PowerPoint presentations. Your polls are created and delivered within your PowerPoint slides. Once you’ve added ParticiPoll to your PowerPoint you can create as many polls as you like. Each poll can have up to six response options. The best aspect of ParticiPoll is that you don’t have to leave your slidedeck at all in order to administer the poll and see the results of your poll. Your audience can respond to your ParticiPoll poll through their cell phones, tablets, or laptops. To respond they simply go to the URL for your poll and choose a response. When you want to display the poll results you just click to the next element in your PowerPoint slidedeck and the results are displayed for all to see. All polls are anonymous.
ParticiPoll.com – Free Audience Polling for PowerPoint from ParticiPoll on Vimeo.
If you’re a Google Slides user, you could share your slides with your students before you begin your presentation (Google Classroom makes it easier than ever to do this). As you’re presenting ask students to submit their questions for you as comments on the slides. It’s not the ideal solution, but I’ve done it and it works.
