Survey Monkey is an invaluable free Web 2.0 tool that I will use in my classroom a I try to get over my fear of cell phone use and the restrictions that dominate our school wide rules. This Internet based survey generator and hosting site will help me get in touch with my students’ level of communication skills. I need to start my queries with the students and understand their level, and Survey Monkey seems an ideal Web 2.0 tool to facilitate. I will organize it with multiple choice, true/false and one or two open ended questions then tabulate the results. I will have my student aids help set up the survey questions. I have a couple of questions in mind, and I would like the students’ input with the questions. After I have gained an understanding of my student population and their cell phone usage history and cell phone models, I will have a basis to create a behavior/consequences contract, educational usage projection, and further lesson plans in my classroom. I plan on having students’ input as far as consequences and cell phone usage and behavior. I hear my colleagues at FSO wax on about the glorious possibilities for the usage of lesson plans with cell phones; however, I don’t understand how this can work if all students do not have current cell phones or our classrooms have good cell phone reception. I really want to incorporate cell phones as an educational process in my classroom, however the levels of maturity vary; what about the immature student who insists on breaking the rules and texting or cheating on a test? How does one monitor 30 students? Since I am going against school policy I will have no recourse. I think my second visit to Survey Monkey will be a questionnaire where students establish their own code of conduct regarding the use of technology.
Photo from http://www.chiefhomeofficer.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/survey_monkey.gif
Survey Monkey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/
Hey Lorri,
ReplyDeleteI am looking over the blogs and gleaning different ideas. I ran across your post on Survey Monkey. After reading what you posted and how you plan on using it, I realized I may be able to use this tool as well. I need to conduct some surveys with my students for my action research project and this may do the trick. Thanks for the post. Keep up the good work.
Lorri:
ReplyDeleteOkay, so I think that you have picked the coolest Web 2.0 tool there is. Not only does their icon look like Boots from Dora the Explorer, their site makes it possible to for us to “explora” our students opinions anonymously. For example, here is a health concern that biology students might wish to know the answer to; “Who among you rarely washes their hands after visiting the bathroom?” Clearly asking for a show of hands after such a question is itself asking for trouble. But with that question on a SurveyMonkey questionnaire, data can be gathered which can be used to establish healthy policies without fear of student embarrassment.
As for myself, I wish that SurveyMonkey had a testing component that would allow for collecting and grading multiple choice/true false quizzes. That way, assessment could be managed with a similar interface and testing and surveying would be more familiar to students. I checked online for QuizMonkey, and to my surprise there was just such a site and it did manage quiz scoring. However, it was run by a collection of pub owners and graded trivia quizzes. The trivia I was okay with, but some might find that advertisements for pubs on quiz questions might be a suggestive sell for some students and therefore wholly inappropriate.
On a more serious note, I found your suggestion to survey students about their cell phone habits intriguing. Such data would be very useful in developing school policies that met the needs of those attending.
Keep up the great work!