Feb 17 2007
The children have spoken…
Over the last week my class have been voting for their new wordpress theme on our class blog. We decided upon 5 themes including the current one and I set up a poll on our wikispace so that the class could vote for their favourite. I used PollDaddy to create the poll and embedded it into our wiki cover page, with some little thumbnails of the themes to help the kids remember. It was a great way for the children to personalise their blog and to make a contribution.
I have been astounded by the response – I deliberately left the voting open to multiple votes just to give a it a bit more scope. I expected the kids to enjoy doing it but the response was so far beyond my expectations!
There were 2567 total votes!! Take a look.
It seemed a small campaign sprung to life during my lunchtime bloggers clubs on Thursday and Friday! Children were calling for supporters and the two themes that emerged as potential winners battled it out, staunch defenders of one theme soon caved in to the massive pressure and swapped sides cancelling out their previous votes.
China Red emerged the winner with 62% of the vote and 1589 individual votes. So we have a new look.
I know the kids were just voting and voting again, but it was a lot of fun and there was so much buzz about with my kids. I know everyone voted and consequently I now know I could use the polls in other ways.
One boy turned to me, as he repeatedly voted China Red into an insurmountable lead, and said how it would be great if we used these to help decide what we can do in class. So we came up with one idea of having a free hour session late on in the week and setting up a poll with a few options like extra PE or art. Let the children decide what they would like to do. Their own democratic timetable!
So I will be exploring two things and would appreciate any help,
- Can you embed a similar poll directly into a Learnerblog post – as opposed to doing it on the wiki? (however successful it was)
- What other curriculum based applications are there for the open use of a poll such as this?
In edublogs under plugins there is a Democracy Poll plugin. I’m not sure if it is on LearnerBlogs as well (because I haven’t used, or had my students use LearnerBlogs).
My school is suppose to have interactive remotes that can be used for taking multiple choice or true-false tests and doing classroom polling. Everyone I ask doesn’t seem to know where they are at though. Here is a link to that company’s webpage:
http://www.einstruction.com
Sometimes before I start a unit of work in Personal and Social Education, I print each topic (around
on card, along with 3 cards for each of the ways that we learn in our class (eg video, discussion, ‘lecture’, visit, podcast etc). There are some blank cards, also. Pupils, in groups, are given 15 minutes to put topics in their preferred order, along with 3 approaches to learning for each. They can use the blank cards if they have any new ideas for activities. I carried out action research which indicated that pupils were motivated to do this; they engaged in the process; and genuinely collaborated with peers. I base this approach on Carl Rogers (particularly ‘Freedom to Learn’).
Thanks Mr Williams and David for your comments and ideas. Unfortunately Learnerblogs does not have the democracy plugin, but edublogs does. I think it would be more useful the other way around.
I currently have a set of TurningPoint voting keypads in the classroom which I have found most useful. We will be using them after the half term, so expect some posts about their use.
David, thanks for the idea you suggested – I like the way that you actually build into the beginning of the unit some sort of personalisation of the learning that will take place. How do you go about making decisions based on their ideas? What happens if there is a broad difference in opinion?
Tom
I must admit that this sort of “personalisation” can lead to much running about (we do the planning around a fortnight in advance), and it verges into ‘just-in-time’ teaching and learning (for which unfiltered broadband access for teachers is a pre-requisite).
They are given 15 minutes. If they have failed to agree as a group (there are only 5 pupils in my class) and have unresolved issues over the decisions, then I make the decisions.