VoxVote, Part II

By Bruce Janu

The first annual CinéStudent Film Festival closed its curtain on Saturday night. We highlighted 11 student films, giving out over $200 in awards.  One of the awards was an "Audience Award," voted on by the audience in attendance.

As I mentioned last week, I decided to try VoxVote for the audience voting at the festival.  After setting everything up, I felt pretty confident it was going to work. I didn't even have a back-up plan, which is unusual for me.  I always try to figure out ways in which things can go wrong and, in this case, I either felt confident or simply ran out of time to come up with an alternative.

Luckily, I didn't have to.

When the audience was ready to vote, I decided to start off with a basic polling question just to get the audience ready and logged on.  After displaying the website and pin for VoxVote, I took them to the first question.  The presentation was being fed through Power Point, so I had to "command+tab" to a web browser on the Mac which was already set to go with the my VoxVote account.  I showed them the first question:  "To what upcoming movie are you most looking forward?"

The audience then voted.  I refreshed the screen periodically so the audience could see how it worked and get a near real-time tally.

And, surprisingly, Finding Dory won.

Then it was time to vote on the best film for the audience award.  I hit the next button and told the audience to start voting and that voting would only be open for 5 minutes. But there was one small problem: I had forgotten to hit the "start" button and people started pointing out that they could not vote.  Once that was figured out, the voting started in earnest. For this segment of the voting, I chose not to display the tally^* and just "command+tabbed" back into Power Point.  I then went upstairs and logged onto a computer to watch the results.  After five minutes, I saw who had won and quickly printed out a certificate for the winner.

One thing I didn't do was to hit the next button when I was done collecting votes.  If I had done that, I would have been given the option to close the voting and all of the participants would have received a message on their devices:

Overall, VoxVote worked extremely well and I am thinking about ways to use it now in class. I'm even going to use it to collect votes for Film Club elections for officers, film screening choices and for film ratings.

Here are some thoughts about VoxVote and its use:

1. Practice.  Once you set everything up, go into preview mode. Run it off you computer and then try out several devices as if you are a participant.
2. Since VoxVote is web based, it can be used on any device.
3. Data can be collected, archived and sorted.  You can even email voting summaries to participants.
4. It would be nice to embed the VoxVote website directly in Power Point, but our versions for the Mac do not allow this.

Give VoxVote a try.  Remember, it is free for District 214 teachers.  Just make sure you register with a 214 email.

Any questions, just ask.

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^* I chose not to display the tally because there were some films that did not receive any votes and I didn't want hurt feelings.

Vox Vote for Large Audience Voting

By Bruce Janu

The CinéStudent Film Festival is coming this Saturday with 11 student films from Elk Grove, Prospect and Hersey. As part of the program, each film will be eligible for an “Audience Award.” The audience will get to vote on the film they think is best.

The problem is: how do we conduct that vote?

Of course, the standard is paper and pencil. But this involves manually counting the ballots. We want immediate feedback. I have used several survey apps and websites over the years, such as Survey Monkey, Ballot Bin and Easy Polls.  Most recently, I have used Socrative during large presentations. However, I wanted to try something different—something more like an actual voting app.  One thing was for sure: the digital option was essential and, since most people have phones at least, a film festival can simply be another BYOD event.


That’s when I discovered VoxVote.

VoxVote is a newer company, offering a mobile voting platform in which real-time results can be displayed via a projector or computer. It works on all platforms, from Apple to Android, and was designed specifically for large presentations.

It is free for teachers, too.  And now it is set up so that anyone with a “d214.org” email can make a free, unlimited account.

Here’s how it works:

After creating an account, click on the “create a new event” button. Then, write questions that your audience can answer using their devices with appropriate responses.

My event is set now with one question: “Which film of the 2015 CinéStudent Film Festival gets your vote for the "Audience Award?"

When I am ready for the audience to begin voting, they need to take out their device and go to live.voxvote.com (or use the free app). They will be prompted for a pin number.

After entering the pin number that you give them, this is what they will see:

On my end, I see a graph and a running total of the votes. This graph can be displayed on the projector, giving a real-time vote count. However, you are manually required to hit the refresh button in order to update the results. This is built into the system on purpose, so that early votes do not cause undue influence on the voting during your event.

Once the voting starts, you can refresh the screen periodically to show a running total of the votes. 

VoxVote seems to be very flexible. I can add questions on the fly if needed. I can change the types of questions asked.  How secure is it as a voting platform? I am not sure. According to the website, VoxVote prevents users from voting more than once. But, like anything, I am sure there are work-arounds. However, I have control over how long the voting continues and can cut it off after a certain amount of time. 

Mobile voting is one way to make presentations more engaging by forcing audience participation. As someone who does a lot of forums throughout the year, a quick way to display questions with immediate feedback can add much to a presentation.

I have used Socrative for “quizzes” during forums. But VoxVote may offer something a little more unique for larger gatherings of people.

And, hopefully, this will be the ideal tool for our film festival.

We’ll see on Saturday. Next week I’ll let you know how it all worked and if Vox Vote is worth the time.