Part A - Description of Need or Opportunity

For this Wicked Problem Project I am going to attempt to tackle the common classroom problem of getting limited discussion or feedback on questions directed to the class.  In my years of teaching science, and now as a web publishing teacher, I have had trouble getting a wide variety of students to share their thoughts in classroom discussion.  It always seems like a limited few are answering all the questions.  What are the other students thinking during the discussion?  Do they know the answer to the proposed question and they are too shy or lacking the confidence to respond?  Or, are the lost entirely, or just not paying attention?

Regardless of the reasons for the problem, I feel like I have a potential solution.  I think that using classroom polls and surveys will help to get the active feedback that is essential in classroom discussion and in my ability to informally assess the students' understanding in a more complete fashion.  One way I plan on accomplishing this is by using www.polleverywhere.com.  With this, students can answer questions using their cell phones or by using the polleverywhere website URL address.  By using this service, the students can respond to my discussion questions without having to speak to the whole class.

I plan on introducing this to the class in the daily bell question.  The questions would be used to get students to review something we have learned in a previous class, or to think about what they will be doing for the day.  I will give the students the first 5-10 minutes of class to respond to the question, and I will be able to track how many of the students have responded to the question.

I have found a couple different examples of this service as an educational tool.  In this blog by digital teach, I saw a quick video of this being used in a science classroom.  Another article discusses the uses of polleverywhere in the classroom and includes some details about how to set up and use the service.  I particularly like how it includes benefits of the service including, "increasing classroom participation and attentiveness".  

I plan to implement this immediately in my web publishing class.  As I discussed, I will be using it for a bell activity a few times a week to start.  If successful, I plan on using it in future classes, including my science classes.  An indication of success would be all of the students in the class responding to the prompting questions in thoughtful ways.  This should also boost student attentiveness during discussions and increase motivation as they get to use their mobile phones in class.