Do you check in with your students throughout a lesson? If you have wanted to get a read of the room, a free live polling tool might come in handy. You can pose a question to your group of students, share a quick link, and have them quickly share their response. A poll can give you a sense of where your students are at the beginning, middle, or end of a lesson.
Today on the blog, I’m excited to share Livepoll, a free live polling tool built for classrooms. Students join by scanning a QR code or typing a six-character code in any browser. There is no app to install and no student account to create. This means a class can answer your first question within about thirty seconds of the screen going up.
Let’s take a look at the features that make Livepoll special and how you can get started for free in your classroom.
A Free Live Polling Tool for Classrooms
When I first started teaching, checking for understanding meant a lot of hand signals. Sometimes it was a thumbs up or thumbs down (or towards the side), other times it was the Fist to Five formative assessment strategy. Even at the time I knew that I couldn’t fully rely on the results. If you’ve ever done something like this at a professional development session, you know it’s hard not to look around the room as you give your response to a question.
Live polling changes the experience entirely. Every student answers, all at once, and you see the whole picture on the screen in front of you. Even a quieter student in the back row has the same voice as the student who always raises a hand.
Most classroom tools cap their free plan somewhere between 25 and 100 participants, which might work for one section of students. If you run an assembly, a grade-level review, or a family night, you might need more access. Livepoll lets up to 1,000 participants join per session and gives you the choice for thirteen different question types to pose to the group.
Try Livepoll for free right here >>
Using Livepoll in Classrooms
With Livepoll it’s super easy to get started. There is no app for students to download, so they don’t need a login to participate. No email address is needed unless you choose a mode that asks for one. Livepoll works on a phone, a Chromebook, or a shared tablet.
The free plan holds up to 1,000 participants in a single session with unlimited sessions. To keep the free version free, Livepoll is ad supported. Participants may see a small banner when they join, on the results page, and below the answer options while a question is open. Nothing ever appears on the screen you are projecting, so the front of the room stays clean, and nothing appears on your exports. Student responses stay visible only to you, and participants stay anonymous. You can see their full list of commitments spelled out on Livepoll’s promises page, which is a helpful page to bookmark and share with colleagues who are vetting new tools.
Create your first poll for free right here >>
13 Question Types in One Free Live Polling Tool
A poll is only as good as the question it asks. Livepoll gives teachers access to 13 question types, so you can tailor the format to the needs of your group. This includes:
- Multiple choice for a fast exit ticket
- Word clouds for a bell ringer that shows the whole room’s thinking at once
- Ranking and rating scales for prioritizing what to review
- Scored quizzes with a leaderboard
- Q&A with upvoting (so a class can surface its own best questions)
- A 2×2 priority grid, async polls you can leave open all day, and more
Regular readers of the blog know that I’m a big fan of word clouds. To picture Livepoll in action, imagine an eighth-grade ELA class naming one word to describe the narrator. The words students repeat rise to the center of the screen and create a word cloud. Now you have a fantastic visual to reference for a class discussion.
Extra Live Polling Tool Features
With Livepoll there is a lot teachers can do completely for free. Attendance tracking and a cross-session gradebook are included at no cost. You can see who joined, follow scores across multiple sessions, and export everything to CSV or PDF for your own records.
That turns polling from a one-off activity into something you can actually track. For example, a middle school math teacher running a Monday warm-up poll can see where students stand with a topic like integers by the end of the month, without building a separate spreadsheet.
Make your own poll to share with students >>
You also get an AI session builder, a template library, presenter notes, and a spinner wheel. Livepoll is available in the Zoom App Marketplace, too, plus a shareable link or QR code for in-person classes. The same poll works whether you are in the same room together or leading a virtual session for a group of students, colleagues, or families.
How to Try Free Live Polling in Your Classroom
If you are curious how free live polling could work with your students, the easiest next step is to try it yourself. Create a poll in under a minute, put the QR code on your screen, and see your whole class answer.
Ready to get started? Pick one lesson this week and open with a single word cloud question. Or turn your exit ticket into two multiple choice questions and export the results. Faculty meetings and professional development sessions are also great low-stakes places to practice. Create your first poll for free right here >>