NEWS

An incredibly simple survey made by second graders goes viral

Chie Davis

The Courier-Journal

North Vermillion Elementary School Facebook page.

One elementary teacher in Indiana just scored some major cool points.

Kara Porter created a lesson to teach her second-grade students about graphs and it went viral. It was super simple, incredibly cute and, as Buzzfeed describes it, just plain "wholesome."

The North Vermillion Elementary School teacher asked each of her students to write a survey question. Some were straight-shooting yes/no questions like:

“Are you a farmer?”
“Do you like Pokemon?”
“Do you like Legos?”

Others dove into topics that require more thought — and by more thought, I mean 5 seconds' worth of time:

“What kind of food do you like? Pizza or Soup?”
“What zoo animal do you like? Lion or Monkey?”
“Who is your favorite Frozen character? Elsa or Anna?”

Porter told BuzzFeed their school secretary posted the survey on the school’s Facebook page on March 15. By the next day, it had racked up 230,000 responses. Four days later, that number grew to 1.2 million.

Porter’s class, located in west-central Cayuga, Indiana, received answers from people as far away as Finland, Tasmania and South Africa. All were eager to share whether they were #teampizza or #teamsoup.

A picture of a laptop showing North Vermillion Elementary School's survey on BuzzFeed.

The class's viral fame came as a surprise since they were “just thinking local” by reaching out to people that they knew on Facebook.

I guess the real lesson is: Never underestimate the power of local.

Once their survey lit up the internet, supporters on the North Vermillion Elementary School Facebook page were quick to hone in on the "little class project’s" big impact:

Emily Ann Meyer wrote “... 3.2 billion people globally have Internet access. Which means that on a worldwide level, 3 out of every 10,000 people with Internet access took the survey (I think, if I did math right).”

“Think of how many spin-off lessons you can have about future careers they could pursue to analyze this data!! Computer science, statistics, sociology, 'viral' communication/public relations/advertising ...” said Julie A. Guest. Michelle Roufa chimed in, “Thanks for sharing - hope the kids can count to a million! Team Science Giraffe Soup forever.”

The results from the popular survey are coming soon … right after the school finishes working with Google.

That’s like saying, "I’ll call you right back after I get off the phone with Oprah."