Using Mood Clouds in Virtual and Hybrid Classrooms

Earlier this I published a video about creating and hosting polls in Google Slides with the Poll Everywhere Chrome extension. When I published that I mentioned that I use the word cloud option and have students respond to simple questions like “how do you feel after the long weekend?” and “what’s the best word to describe today’s lesson?” Students respond from their computers and a word cloud appears on the slide giving me a better sense of the overall mood of my hybrid class (half of my students are virtual and half are in-class on any given day). It’s not perfect, but it works for me and it might work for you.

Three Tools for Creating and Hosting Polls in Slides

As mentioned above, I’m currently using the combination of Google Slides and Poll Everywhere. You can watch this video to see how that combination works. Poll Everywhere also offers a PowerPoint add-in that works in a very similar manner. Of course, you could also just use PollEverywhere.com directly without the slides. All three options will let you display word clouds.

Sli.do is another tool that you can use in Google Slides and PowerPoint to create an host polls. Students can respond to your polls from their computers or phones. I’ve used Sli.do in the past. I’m not currently using it for any particular reason other than I wanted to try something different this fall. Here’s a little video overview of how it works in Google Slides. Both the PowerPoint and Google Slides versions will display word clouds of responses from students.

Mentimeter is another polling tool that I’ve used at various times in the past, mostly in conference presentations. While it doesn’t offer a Google Slides add-on, it does offer a PowerPoint add-in that you can use to create and host polls. Like the two services listed above, Mentimeter lets students respond to your questions from their computers and phones. Responses can be displayed in a variety of formats including word clouds.

Using Mood Clouds in Virtual and Hybrid Classrooms

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