Notes on Clickers
Monday, January 13th, 2014
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
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
Uses phones, laptops, etc. and they are always keen to do a demo.
- Poll Everywhere
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:
- answerqwik.com/ I haven’t used it, but they seem serious.
- OMBEA ResponseApp www.ombea.com/products/ombea-responseapp/
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
