My learning pod chose to analyze and present an educational tool called Mentimeter. We found Mentimeter to be a very useful tool for any classroom since it can be used to create presentations, surveys, quizzes, diagrams, charts, and graphs.
Photo taken from a screencast of our presentation.
My role in our research and presentation was to introduce the tool to the class and also present an example of how Mentimeter could be used in my own teachable area, English. After playing around with some of Mentimeter’s different functions, I thought that the word cloud tool could be a great brainstorming activity for a class. For an English class specifically, a word cloud activity would be a great way for students to collaborate and come up with different ideas for a theme of a novel or short story that we read together. Rather than asking students to share their ideas with the class orally, I could pull up Mentimeter and have them type out as many ideas as they can think of. As you can see in the example that I created above, Mentimeter takes the answers from students and formats them into a colourful word cloud where the most common answers increase in size. Not only does Mentimeter allow students to share their ideas with the class without the stress of having to speak in front of everyone, but it also records the answers for students and allows them to see their different ideas organized next to each other. Having the answers available for everyone to see will help further the brainstorming session and spark an active discussion.