Last year I tried out Poll Everywhere, a website that lets you set up online polls that can be voted on by text messaging. I had intended to use it with my Earth Science class for test reviews: I'd put up a multiple-choice question, and students (working in groups) would text their responses. The website then displays the live response results, and then I could show the correct answer. It was a way to implement a classroom response system without the hardware investment of buying clickers.
I had two main problems. One was registration. Poll Everywhere is offered free for K-12 teachers, for up to 40 students in a class. The next level up is $50/year, which gets you some advanced features, like recording what answers each kid texts. I thought that would be useful, and it would have been, except getting my freshmen to sign up, then reply to an email (that was often in their spam folders), was just asking too much.
The other problem was access. In my classroom at LCC, many students didn't get adequate signal to be able to participate. Many other had this type of text-response blocked from their service, so they don't run up huge bills voting on American Idol or something like that. There really weren't enough students in the class that could successfully text in to the system, that I gave it up.
If you can overcome or avoid these problems, though, it's a nice system. The website is easy to make polls and comes with pretty detailed instructions for teachers and students.
