Which activity, and when
Five activities, and the honest answer about which moment each one is actually for.
They are not interchangeable, and picking the wrong one is the most common way a first session falls flat. The useful question is not which is best but what you want the room to be doing for the next twenty minutes.
If you want them arguing
The Stock Market Simulation. Teams commit real money to a decision, then live with it through five news rounds. It needs about forty minutes and it needs teams rather than individuals, because the arguing between four people is the actual content.
If you want to check something landed
QuizPulse, with your own questions. This is the one that fits any subject, because you bring the content: upload a spreadsheet or write the questions on the spot. It is also the one to reach for when you already have questions written and no time to invent an activity around them.
If you want to teach judgement
Signal or Noise. It is the shortest of the five and the only one whose questions have no single obviously correct answer, which is why the discussion after each reveal tends to be better than the scores.
If you want to hear from the quiet half
LivePulse. Anonymous by default, no scoring, no winner. The absence of a scoreboard is the feature: nobody is performing, so what comes back is closer to what people actually think.
If you want them out of their seats
PhotoPulse. It needs a brief worth photographing and a room where getting up is acceptable. In its AI mode it needs neither, and becomes an exercise in describing an idea precisely.
A sequence that works
- LivePulse to open, so you know what the room already thinks before you teach anything.
- Signal or Noise as a warm-up, which rehearses the judgement the simulation then demands.
- The Stock Market Simulation as the main event.
- QuizPulse the following week, on what the report said they missed.
Pick by what you want the room doing, not by which activity looks most impressive on the board.
A note on phones
Only the Stock Market Simulation runs without them, in a board-only mode where you enter each team’s call yourself. Its activity page explains that trade-off properly. Everything else needs a device per person, and one phone per team is usually a better compromise than either extreme.