By Micki Bare
Heading to a seminar for two or three days used to mean sitting in a cramped room listening to someone talk while doodling on a pad of paper and praying for time to move faster.
Doodling was good, because it kept the eyes from glazing over. Once participants began daydreaming about the buffet two blocks away that was perfect for lunch or the outlet stores they could stop in on the way home, eyes became fixed and blinking nearly ceased altogether.
Today, a seminar means, at the very least, extra down time while the trainers try to figure out how to make the technology work correctly. But that’s good, because if you don’t have down time while trainers are fiddling with laptops, flash drives and projectors, you have no time to plan for lunch and shopping.
Slide shows brought fun sound and visual effects into an otherwise dry day of training. Internet access cranked it up a notch by allowing trainers to go online and incorporate resources that used to be condensed into a handout that ended up at the bottom of a canvas bag. The bag would inevitably find itself crammed under file boxes in the back of a storage closet.
If you ever did find the handouts, you wouldn’t be able to decipher enough to remember why you became so inspired during that particular seminar. Then you’d see the cute scarf you found at a nearby outlet store and realize it was the 60 percent-off sale, not the seminar, that motivated you to refrain from turning in your resignation and joining the Peace Corps.
Today, trainers are using polling programs. They can poll the audience before introducing a topic and find out how many trainees have prior knowledge of the material. Then they can re-poll after covering the topic to determine how many developed an understanding of the concept as compared to the percentage who spent their time doodling or planning for lunch.
It is very similar to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, during which the contestant becomes stumped and chooses to use the “poll the audience” lifeline. The trainer displays a slide showing a question and a variety of possible answers. Each participant has a “clicker” and can select the answer by pressing a corresponding button.
The trainer knows how many participants are in the room. The software tallies the number of responses. Therefore, if several folks are otherwise distracted by a side conversation about SpongeBob Square Pants and fail to respond, the trainer can announce that only 20 people input their answers and she is waiting for the other eight or so to “click in.”
Not only did polling every now and again keep me from slipping into a professional development-induced coma, it was also fun. Hearing the trainer announce, “Get out your clickers! It’s time for another poll,” gave me that little adrenaline kick I needed to stay engaged.
Of course, it also got me thinking that polling technology could be useful for more than game shows and seminars.
There should be an app for cell phones that enables families to not only text each other, but to conduct polls. What do you want for supper (a. hot dogs; b. spaghetti and meatballs; c. I’m going out with my friends and will get something while I’m out)? What do you want to do on Saturday afternoon (a. drive to the mountains for apples and pumpkins; b. see a movie; c. I have to work, bring me back some of that apple cider)?
A polling app could work for friends, as well. This technology could actually eliminate the most annoying yet widely used conversation from existence. No longer would people get caught in that circular conversational trap: “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do YOU want to do?”
Rather than calling or texting your friends for input on Girls Night Out, you could poll them. Where should we go Thursday night (a. the bowling ally; b. that new restaurant downtown; c. Sue’s place for poker and munchies — her husband is away on a fishing trip)?
The results would be displayed in anonymous bar graphs with corresponding percentages, so those responding could be completely honest. With a few ground rules like deciding based on the majority and rotating who develops the poll and answer options, planning activities could actually be the easy part of getting together.
I don’t want you to think I was coming up with uses for polling technology rather than paying attention during my seminar. I actually do understand that weaknesses in accuracy, rate and prosody can affect a person’s ability to read fluently and that explicit instruction can help improve those areas.
If you agree, press a. If you disagree, press b. If you have no clue, press c.
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Micki Bare is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and the Courier-Tribune in Asheboro, N.C., and author of the book, “Relative Expressions.” She lives in Asheboro with her husband and three children. Her e-mail address is mickibare@inspiredscribe.com.
