Asking Questions of the World

I stumbled into the Ask500 Questions site this weekend and it has been fascinating. Here is the concept: you write a question, pose some possible answers and let visitors to the site cast some votes. Ask500 Questions then tracks the answers on a map and breaks down the results a bit. I guess if a question gets to 500 people (seems doubtful right now), then the question is retired.

I posed a couple of questions, including whether or not technology helps someone become a better writer, whether teachers should encourage their students into social action projects, and (as you can also upload images) which Boolean Squared webcomic character is destined for something spectacular.

Go ahead and vote yourself and add your own question.

You can also embed the queries and results into a blog post, so let me give it a try:


I was pondering whether this has any applications in the classroom. While I may not want my students freely roaming the questions — some may be on the line of appropriateness — it might be interesting to have them propose a question and possible answers, and then track what happens to the results as a class (after casting some predictions).
Peace (in results),
Kevin

5 Comments
  1. Pingback: Ask 500 People | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

  2. I teach an educational technology class and a couple of the teachers had their students ask survey questions of kids in the school. The students generated their own questions. One teacher used Create-a-Graph (http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createAGraph/) to post their results, another Excel. The students loved formulating the questions, walking around and asking other students during recess and lunch for their answers, then producing a professional looking graph to share their answer. This is a great follow-up! How exciting to see responses from around the world coming in. I agree, I’d not have my students browse the website, but embedding the results in your blog is perfect.

  3. some great stuff not jsut with this, but earlier on. thanks to Larry Ferlazzo, i can continue to find out more.
    Thanks for sharing.

  4. Thanks for the writeup Kevin – the site has had a great response with teachers so far, but I’m not sure where to go with that. Any ideas? Anything that’d make it more useful or interesting in your classroom?

  5. Thanks all around and Aaron, I will think some more about your question of applications and get back to you. I appreciate your willingness to be open to suggestions. I like the site very much and find it intriguing.
    Kevin

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