Make Your Next Lesson, Presentation, or Meeting More Interactive

Would you like to make your next lesson, presentation, or meeting more interactive and give everyone an equal chance to participate? If you answered “yes,” then you’ll want to try Sli.do. Sli.do is an audience engagement tool that allows you to crowd source questions or provide polls.

How It Works

Here’s how Sli.do works:

1. Go to Sli.do and sign up for a free account.
2. Create an event. The event can be a presentation you are doing or a meeting you are having. It could it even be a classroom lesson you are teaching.
3. Name the event and enter a start and end date.
4. Create the event and then you’ll be able to crowd source questions or create polls.
   • To crowd source questions, click on Go To Questions and give your audience the URL, which is http://slido.com and the code, which begins with a hashtag (#). The code can always be changed by clicking on the name of your event. Your audience can ask questions anonymously or they can enter their name. This feature of Sli.do reminds me a lot of Google Slides Q&A.
   • To create a poll, click on Create a Poll and then select the type of poll you would like to give. You can choose from Multiple Choice, Open Text, Word Cloud, or Rating. Once you create your poll, make sure you activate it. Your audience can answer the poll by going to the same URL, which is http://slido.com and entering the code for your event.

My Favorite Interactive Features

I created a meeting event to test this tool out and it was incredibly easy to set it up. It provides you with an overview of how many active users are logged into your event, how many questions have been asked in order of popularity, and how many poll votes have been taken. In addition, an infographic can be created from the results, which can then be shared or embedded.

Another thing I liked was the Word Cloud poll. I’ve always been a fan of word clouds, so I was excited when I saw this as a feature. As the audience enters words, the size of the word changes dynamically depending on how many times your attendees submit it. I can see this working well with one-worded or short responses, which can then be easily displayed on screen.

Lastly, I love the brainstorming option, which you can read more about below.

Brainstorm Ideas

I have always been a fan of brainstorming. It is a great way to collect different viewpoints and encourage critical thinking. It also helps with team building. There is a feature in Sli.do, called Ideas, currently in beta, that allows for brainstorming.

To turn this on, click on the name of your event and then click on Features. From here, you can toggle the switch to turn this on. When you do, you will see a new Ideas tab appear. From here, you can create a topic about which you want your audience to brainstorm. Once the ideas start coming in, you can star them, highlight them, or even respond to them.

What You Get For Free

Sli.do can be used for free. With the free account, you can crowd source questions with up to 1000 audience members per event. You can have up to three polls per event. For brainstorming, you can create one topic per event. In addition, you can change the hashtag code for your event.

Unfortunately, the free version doesn’t let you change the privacy settings. Therefore, your event will be public until the date you set for the event to end. In addition, another thing to note is that with the free version, you can’t moderate incoming questions. They will appear live as they are entered.

There are special educational plans if you want the additional features that Sli.do has to offer, such as password protecting your event and exporting event data.

Google Slide Integration

Currently, with Sli.do, there is a Switcher app you can download for Windows or Mac. This allows you to seamlessly switch between your PowerPoint or Keynote and Sli.do. Google Slide integration is coming soon. If you want to take advantage of early access to the Sli.do add-on for Slides, sign up here.

Get Started with More Interaction

As you get started with Sli.do, you might want to review these handy tips. They will really help you have a good experience with using Sli.do and will help you get the most out of the interaction with your audience.

I would love to know what you think of Sli.do. Let me know in the comments!