Teachers are in a continuous battle to get students to connect to the information conveyed in lessons.  Encouraging students to construct understanding, to become fascinated with learning, and be drawn into insightful dialogue requires more than a strategy that creates knowledge derived from memorization. Teachers today have a weighty responsibility of providing students with experiences that relate to their way of thinking; this responsibility encompasses the use of technology that is both effective and instructional.

In Joshua Smith’s EDTECH Learning Log, Poll Everywhere is promoted as a tool that is innovative, relevant, and essential for teachers looking to get students to apply knowledge, not just encounter it.  Poll Everywhere arms teachers with a means that makes students active learners. 

As teachers, we are in a battle with the passive student but can find victory through engagement.  Perhaps we need to take on the role of Marc Antony and declare civil strife with the apathetic student.  This may require some districts making peace with the use of technology in the classroom by seeing it as an effective way to apply learning through a means that happens to be intrinsically social – a win-win situation.