Notes on Clickers

Mon Jan 13 23:21:25 2014 EST (-0500 GMT)

Clickers

Some notes on physical and virtual classroom “clickers” that I’ve maintained in Evernote over the years and shared a few times. Seemed like a good thing to blog about.

Phone-based:

  • Turning Technologies has physical clickers and smart-phone clickers
    www.turningtechnologies.ca/
    If you are using a textbook from Nelson or Pearson there might be a chance that you could get the software and base for free from them — but the students would have to pay. ITS’ AV Services also have around 50 of these for sign-out.
  • Top Hat Monocle
    www.tophatmonocle.com/
    Uses phones, laptops, etc. and they are always keen to do a demo.
  • Poll Everywhere
    www.polleverywhere.com
    Is free for under 40 people but gets expensive as numbers are added.

iOS-based:

  • Socrative http://www.socrative.com/
  • Flexible and free. Waiting for other shoe to drop. What Mr. Clare Sr. uses.

Web/Smart-phone based:

  • Mentimeter https://www.mentimeter.com/
    It is new and promises to be free, but I have not used it.
  • mqlicker www.mqlicker.com/
    is new and promises to be free, but I have not used it.
    A Brock University Economics prof really liked this option
  • Not free at all is:

Also:

Then the Chronicle of Higher Ed. has some quick idea for low-tech clickers:
chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/low-tech-alternatives-to-clickers/34184

Live classroom interaction, polling, chat…

  • Piazza https://piazza.com/

    Piazza allows for large groups to ask questions and vote up the important ones. It is a very interesting way to get feedback in a large class. It is free and has an LTI integration that the CPI can add to any Isaak/Sakai site.  It surprises me how often instructors interested in “simple” polling like the realtime feedback Piazza gives.

  • More survey & marketing style http://www.signalhq.com/
    Signal – good buzz (possibly for the API) with a free trial
  • Shared Sticky notes http://listhings.com/

 

That’s my list.  It’s just the notes I’ve been keeping, but hopefully it helps someone else.

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