Paula Rogers Ecomp/6102
Survey Monkey is a "free" service whereby you can post questions and invite participants
to respond online at the site. Our school administrators use Survey Monkey to survey
teachers on a variety of things. Last spring they used it as a self-evaluation tool. The
administration wasn’t able to find out who made the comments. (Although, the results
were quite positive for our administrators.)
I found Survey Monkey to be very user friendly. This was my first try at setting up an
account. I signed up for the free basic account. All that is required is for the user to
register. I signed up a week ago and haven’t received advertisement e-mails for
registering. Amen! Setting up the questions was easy. I had a little fun playing around
with various color combinations and background styles as I keyed in my questions. The
site has the option of allowing you to browse responses to your questions. You may even
share responses with others. If I wanted to survey my Title I parents I would be able to
share the survey results with my principal. But this option is only available if you pay for
the upgrade. It also allows me to download responses so that I would have a hard copy
for student portfolios.
Survey Monkey Pricing is a follows:
Survey Monkey sends a survey invitation on your behalf. You can customize the message
that is sent, and track responses in your list. In addition, you can create a popup invitation
for your web page. I decided to link it to my own e-mail account.
After choosing the link option I was able to view the following link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=aGeK4a83n_2bP49gI_2bdPA9ng_3d_3d
I took this link and then pasted it into my e-mail messages. Voila it was sent!
I sent it to my superintendent just to try it out and he did respond and I was able to read
his answers in the responses. I sent the survey to Darby Hart, who is one of my student’s
mothers along with directions to do the survey. Darby’s son is in my Title I classroom. It
was a fun parent involvement activity. She is also a teacher so has answered Survey
Monkey for administrative questions but never for a student survey as a parent. She was
very excited and willing to do the survey. My students are only 5th graders and e-mail
accounts for students at that level are not encouraged through the school. It was really fun
to have Austin share with the class how he and his mom completed the survey via e-mail
over the weekend. Austin, who is a struggling reader became a star for the next day in my
class. His mom also replied to my e-mail message. I had her message on display via my
Smartboard when Austin’s group came to class that day. I had them do the survey
together on the Smartboard. I first had to explain to them what each of the questions were
asking. I read each question as my class viewed them on the screen. I tallied the votes
with the Smartboard Pens on the side of the screen. While accessing they told me they
don’t like taking tests. But they did like doing a survey on the Smartboard. They said they
like working as a group to take a test.
Survey Results for my Students with Survey Monkey
Question 1: They take tests because their teachers require them. 100% They all said
they do not like assessment and only take them because their teacher requires them.
Question 2: If you had a choice about how you would show all the things you have
learned about a topic,which kind of assessment would you choose? 100% said they’d
rather do a demonstration. They have demonstrations for the Social Studies Fair and they
said that is why they like demonstrations. They said they don’t like doing this in the
classroom with all the students but it is all right in my Title I classroom with six in the
group.
Question: 3 Who is the Information for? They said for the teacher 100% All 6 agreed it
is for the teacher.
Question: 4 What do you do with assessment information you get from your teacher?
Two of the students said nothing. While 4 said they think about what I need to do to get
better grades.
Poll_Everywhere
The biggest difference with Poll Everywhere is that it allows you to vote by mobile
phone. It also allows you to embed it into a blog or web page. In addition, you may vote
to Smartphone as a text message. You may even download the results in Powerpoint.
This would be a nice way to share staff results for a staff meeting. There are additional
text and color options available to the survey. There is also the option of live audience
polling. Again, this could be a wonderful way to access children or staff development. I
thought our staff could take an online assessment as a group or your whole class right
after the lesson. If you have only 32 students it is free. If you have 35 students the cost is
$129 per year. A school-wide plan is $2.50 per student or your entire faculty. I wasn’t
able to send message if I didn’t upgrade my account. The Everywhere Poll wasn’t as user
friendly as Survey Monkey. If receivers aren’t on unlimited texting then they will be
charged .20 per survey. If you are a Mac user you probably don’t use PowerPoint. It
wasn’t mentioned if it translated into Mac’s KeyNote or not.
It reminds me of using the Senteo’s with the Smartboard. Since our administration is
already using Survey Monkey with my community and staff I would prefer using format
our parents are already familiar with. Plus, it is a simpler interface and we are not in an
area that is able to use the Smartphone as of yet. It is just marvelous to think we have
access to tools like this.
There are many ways that I might use these tools for understanding how students
relate to assessments in the classroom - or their attitudes toward assessment. I found
through Austin and my 5th graders that they were very engaged in the technology process.
They wanted to take the survey as a group. I let them be part of the decision and they
were thrilled to be part of the assessment planning process. My students were motivated
by using the Smartboard. They came in the room and smiled when they saw the message
from Darby Hart on the interactive whiteboard. The idea of accessing their learning was
completely new to them. Something they had never thought much about. I have observed
the use of technology to motivate students over and over again. Many of my student’s
parents are online and technology literate or at least they have computers at home. It
seems that they are more knowledgeable with computers then they are at helping with
homework. The technology does form a bridge of communication with parents. And it
does thrill my students to have their parents involved. I often e-mail parents and plan to
e-mail all of them with my next survey by using Survey Monkey. My students said they
want to work together to create a survey for their parents. I thought that that was really
outside the box. Since Survey Monkey does allow you to ask 10 questions for free I will
be able to try this and remind the kids. I did get a true picture of how they feel about
assessment through the survey. I shared the results with their classroom teacher and she
agreed that they don’t like tests. I will suggest to our administration that our district
purchase a site license for Survey Monkey.