Contact Chris Carter Hertfordshire Development Centre Tel: 01438 843918 Email: chris.carter @hertscc.gov.uk

Case Studies
Voting systems in the classroom Herts ACTIVote Pilot Cunningham Hill Infants Colney Heath School Presdales School St Lukes School
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What is a Voting System?	What Can a Voting System Do?	What Do You Get?	How Can You Use Them?
Software based response systems	Classroom Response Systems (Voting Systems)		updated What is Available?
	How Much Do They Cost?	Try it for Yourself	Are They All The Same?

What is a Voting System?

With a voting system, each student gets a handset and can feedback views, answers or data to a receiver and software on your computer. It’s a bit like the audience poll on “Who wants to be a millionaire?”.

The software records the students’ responses. It produces and can present reports, graphs and marksheets.

Voting systems work extremely well in conjunction with interactive white boards. They bring interactivity and inclusion to the modern classroom.

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What Can a Voting System do?

With a voting system, you can:

• involve a whole class in questions and answers;
• get instant responses;
• produce graphs and charts of responses;
• measure response times;
• set up sequences, presentations and quizzes within lessons;
• get a report on a sequence of responses.

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What Do You Get?

A typical system comes with:

• a number of handsets (8, 16, 24, 32);
• a receiver (either infra red or radio);
• software to make questions and connect with the hardware.

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How Can You Use Them?

The only limit to their use is your imagination. They probably work best in small doses. For example:

• formative assessment;
• summative assessment (with care) – quick quiz;
• quick feedback on verbal questions;
• polling of views – on a story, pieces of work, current affairs et al;
• emotional wellbeing – confidential instant measure of how children are feeling.

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What is Available?

There are a few systems on the market. Some of these are:

• Activote (Promethean)
• ACTIV-Expression (Promethean) new
• Ezclickpro
• Genee Pad updated
• Optivote
• Powervote
• Qwizdom
• RM Easi-respond new
• Senteo (Smart)
• Turningpoint

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Are They All the Same?

No. They have different features which may suit your needs and desires. Things to look out for are:

• The symbols on each voting button. They may be letters, numbers or symbols. new

• Does it have free text input or only multiple choice? new
• size of handset
• right/wrong feedback on handset
• import of powerpoint and export to Excel
• will it run as a toolbar (in verbal mode)
• response time measurement
• charting features
• price.

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How Much Do They Cost?

It varies between systems and on the number of handsets. A 32 handset system costs between £500 and £2000.

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Software Based Response Systems

With mobile devices becoming more popular and ICT suites offering one-to-one pupil access to computers, many response system companies are now making software versions which allow you to vote from your existing technology, eg a netbook, laptop, ipod or even desktop computer. This saves you the need for dedicated voting hardware. Example of software based systems include:

• Promethean ACTIV-Engage
• Smart Response CE
• TurningPoint ResponseWare

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Try it for Yourself

There is a loan system available from the Hertfordshire Development Centre. Contact Chris Carter if you would like to try it out in your school.

This system is very popular so there is a waiting list of interested schools. If you would like a quick demonstration of a system at Hertfordshire Development Centre, please contact Chris Carter.

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Contact

For more information or help, please contact Chris Carter at Hertfordshire Development Centre.

Tel: 01438 843918
Email: chris.carter@hertscc.gov.uk

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