Audience Response Systems

Probably the best tool system to keep your audience engaged, from a presenters standpoint, is by using an Audience Response System. For those not familiar with such a tool let's revisit the past and see how far this technology has come.

Older systems consisted of hand held devices like this one shown below:

These units were handed out to audience members in attendance prior to the presentation. The presenter would run a "polling" plugin app compatiable to an applicartion like PowerPoint. A receiver unit, similiar to the one below, was connected to the presenters computer via USB or ethernet. This allowed each clicker to communicate with the polling software.

Some of the major problems with this sytem was each clicker unit required batteries. Unused units caused batter drain or corrosion, which could damage the units. Another problem is that these units had to be within a few yards of the receiver unit, so no remote viewers could participate.

The ever evolving apps built for smart phones have relagated these older systems to eBay. With the entire concept of audience/classroom partipation being web based and free, now even reote viewers can partipate. And the system is not contained to soley PowerPoint. Applications such as Poll Everywhere, iClicker, Echo, and ClassQuestion are just a few, but free web based apps that teachers, students, lectureres can use to create a more engaging time with their audience. These programs come with several different polling design templates, and in most cases the reponses can be archived. Let's take a look at the system I am most familiar with, Poll Everywhere. https://www.polleverywhere.com/videos

Below is a screenshot from one of my previous presentations where I used the "image" selection poll template. Here I inserted a photo of a disceted frog and asked the audiece to identify the liver. The templated allowed me to identify the correct section prior to publishing the slide.