I tried Mentimeter.com on the first day of school
On the first day of school, I jumped in and tried something new: Mentimeter.com. It’s an interactive presentation software website that helps you increase engagement while gathering valuable information for teaching.
I used its popular word cloud presentation, but there are many other presentation styles available depending on your goals. Try open-ended questions, scales, ranking charts, bar charts, question-and-answer and others.
Q: What was my goal?
A: To start off the year with my seniors with an easy, tech-y activity that would also help us acknowledge and embrace the challenges of learning in the year 2020.
I asked students to think of three words that could be used to “describe, guide, define, or propel” us into the school year. Then I projected the word cloud blank screen I had created at mentimeter.com onto the white board. I then asked students to go to menti.com to get a six-digit code that would then take them to a screen where they could enter their three words.
It actually took you, dear reader, longer to read that paragraph than it did for me to start seeing the word cloud populate with student responses.
Literally, within seconds, various words from students were populating my whiteboard, shifting sizes and rotating positions and colors as more words were added in real time. It was fun to watch the cloud develop and it was interesting to see the variety of words splash up onto the screen.
This, below, is actually a screen shot of the word cloud we made that Mentimeter later emailed to me as a PDF file. All your presentations can be collected and sent to you like this.
Based on its ease of use, I will definitely use Mentimeter.com. In fact, you can test Mentimeter right now by entering the on-screen code at this link.
Plus, it’s free.
There are lots of features you can use with a free account. Mentimeter also has a “Teachers and Students” menu with ideas for more ways to use the software in the classroom or online for remote learning. For example, you can:
- Check students’ prior knowledge on a topic
- Formative assessments
- Quizzes
- Reflections
There are definitely many more capabilities and details about the software that I don’t know about yet. But I’m sure that the more I use it, the more I’ll learn.
If you’re needing something new and easy-to-use that will engage both in-classroom and at-home students AND show solid information quickly, give Mentimeter.com a go.
I know this post sounds like an ad; please know that it’s not. It’s just fun to try something new, experience good results, and then pass the info along to you.
Have a great week!
Tech for tech’s sake isn’t the solution. However, when technology spices up your classroom routine, increases engagement, and provides you valuable information for teaching, why not try it? Let me know if you’ve tried Mentimeter.com and what your experience has been. Or… do you know something I don’t know about this app? Please share in the comments or by contacting me at elabraveandtrue@gmail.com!
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I’ve been looking for something just like this. Thanks for sharing! (I think you should come work at my school…)
Fantastic! Let me know how it works for you. 😎