Swift is a new polling service that lets you collect responses through text messages or through a simple webpage. The free version of the service allows you to collect responses from up to 50 people per poll. That limit is adequate for most classroom settings.

To get started on Swift you need to create an account. Your students do not need to create an account in order to respond to your poll questions. When you create an account you will be assigned a phone number that your audience can use to respond to your poll. Alternatively, your students can go to the web address assigned to your poll to submit responses. Your poll questions must be written in multiple choice format.

Swift allows you to program an automated text message response to your poll respondents. So if you choose this option, you could include a link for students to follow to the next activity that you want them to do in your classroom that day. You can also choose to have students instantly view the results of the poll.

Applications for Education

Swift could be a good little service to use to gather anonymous feedback from your students. The option to use text messaging, web responses, or both makes Swift a versatile tool for schools. The option to send students to a new page after submitting a text response could help you keep your students on task. The option to instantly show poll results could be helpful in starting discussions in your classroom.