sweet & simple formative e-assessment

Powerpoint is usually condemned as the archetypal counter-example to formative e-assessment. PowerPoint doesn’t have any mechanism for collecting feedback from the audience, once you your presentation is rolling there’s little you can do to change its course.

PollEverywhere changes that. Their plugin allows you to conduct polls, collect responses by twitter or other tools, and display them as text or charts. Now all you need is a few action buttons, and you have a contingency point in powerpoint: a junction where you change your presentation path based on audience feedback.

As always, the specific technology is an illustration. You may know of other tools that do the same (and please add them in the comments). What you should take from this is the design pattern.

(HT Jane via @tryberg)