Flisti

Flisti is a free online poll website that does not require any sign up.  Flisti would be a great tool to use on the first day of school or the beginning of a unit to gauge where students stand on a particular subject.  If you teach a current events class Flisti would be a simple way to get a feel for what students are thinking on certain issues.  The tool is simple to use.  Just type in your question, type in the possible answers, choose whether you want to allow multiple answers, and then click on the "Create Poll" button.  You then get a simple URL that you can share and then go back and view later to get results. 

If you have a school or class Twitter or Facebook page you can share the poll there as well to get the word out to your students.  If students choose too they can log-in using a profile from another service and add comments to the poll, therefore making the poll interactive.  If you have students watch the news, you could create polls on news stories and get instant feedback from your students and then discuss in class the next day.  Same if you are watching a movie in class as well.

Flisti seems to be a rather simple tool to use and could be easily adapted into the classroom

Braingle

I always like to start the school year/week/day/hour with some kind of Brain Teaser to get my kids attention in class.  Sometimes it can be tough to find new ones or ones that the kids have never heard.  I always like when a kid has one that they have heard as well and tries to challenge me.  I usually end up solving it, and that usually makes them mad.  But it is times like those that help build relationships with your students.

Braingle is a site that has several brain teasers, trivia, mentalrobics, and games.  There is a daily one that you can view as well as an archive.  Each category above is then broken into several subcategories to help you find what you might be looking for.  You can also sign up for an account and upload your own brain teaser as well as mark off the ones that you solve.  This would be helpful if you use them in the classroom so you can avoid using the same one twice

Brain teasers were such a hit in my psychology class.  Braingle would have been a great resource if I was still teaching it.  How can you use this site in your classroom?