Instant Program Feedback

A colleague of mine thinks of me as Mr. All Things 2.0. Great! So, she is planning an ALA program at which she would like to offer the audience a chance to send textual responses. I'll quote her:

"We thought about using Clickers, but these only let you vote or answer multiple choice questions, rather than providing qualitative responses/suggestions via text. We are looking into using SMS/cell phone texting, but we'd like to display it on a screen. There are some commercial options, but I fear they will too expensive. Someone mentioned that using Twitter might be a possibility. Any thoughts on this possibility?"

So, how about it? Could Twitter perform this function? Is there some other way to collect and instantly display text responses? I'm not a Twitterer, but I am thinking the problem would be that the person with the computer and projector would have to already be friends with the senders in order for them to display.

Tags: conference, feedback, program, responses, twitter

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Deborah Fitchett on April 16, 2008 at 3:28am

I'm not very proficient at Twittering, but I think if you get the audience to use a #hashtag at the start of their reply to identify it then you should be able to use Tweetscan to get the responses.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Patty Windsor on May 7, 2008 at 10:25am

I'm not up on 2.0 as much as I need to be, so I consulted with my husband who is much more fluent. He said some presenters set up a private chat room using chatzy.com and have a "google jockey" monitor the responses and relay them to the presenter during the presentation Here is a site that talks about it.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/02/backchannels-and-microbl...

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Andrew Walsh on September 25, 2008 at 7:16am

Did you manage to set something up? The problem with twitter is both setting up an account and then "following" the people in the group to display it on the screen at the front.

I've also looked for a way of displaying text / MMS messages from a group at the front of the session but not found anything unless we get them to register beforehand, which isn't really practical for one-off library sessions. With Moblog for instance, set up a group, then if they register beforehand they can then text a message to a generic number with a codeword as the first word of the text. This then will make sure the text message appears on the group page. The requirement to register beforehand is still a stumbling block though!

Anyone any more ideas for displaying Texts / MMS on a page during a one off session or talk?