After further pondering the use of technology in classroom assignments, I moved on to the idea of trying to keep students engaged during the class.  I also liked that some articles have argued that personal electronics should not necessarily be dismissed as a class distraction, rather it can be used as a tool during class.  The Brain Rules chapter emphasized the importance of interacting with content quickly and repetitively.  This brought me to the idea of using surveys during class (like Dr Rodrigo does with googleforms during class, but with a capacity for larger classes).  

As I searched for survey programs to use in the classroom, I came across this article.  I decided to try one of the survey programs that the article recommended; I chose Socrative because I wanted no limitations on the number of questions in my poll, I wanted to be able to get real-time results, and I wanted it for FREE (of course).  As a bonus, I hoped to find a program that could also be accessible by iPhones, iPads, etc.  Ideally, I would have preferred embedding capabilities and for students to not have to download or log into anything, but you can't have it all and you definitely can't have it all for free.  Socrative allows teachers to get instant feedback via polls, quizzes and such.  There is a teacher app that you download and a student app that they download; both are downloadable to smartphones and tablets and both are free.  (I would obviously need to ponder how students without tablets or smartphones, if there is such a student, would access my quiz.)  You can pre-create a quiz and save it for multiple uses or you can throw-out a poll question on the fly during your lecture.  The program also has a built-in "exit ticket" feature for implementing exit tickets like we do in this class, but I decided to integrate mine into the quiz.  Here is are two reviews of Socrative.  One here.  And one here.  Here is the Socrative user's guide.