University of Delaware Responds to Classroom Clickers

http://campustechnology.com/articles/49681/

An interesting article I came across on how clickers become common place on a campus. in this situation campus officials responded to a number of instructors trying the technology out for themselves, kind of like a grassroots start up. Administration did not want several systems to be used and have to support each. Also they did not want to burden students with having to buy multiple devices for their classes. It seems a bit much to ask students to buy this technology, should this be optional? I guess if it will be used in multiple classes and is beneficial to both students and instructors the cost is worth it over a four year period. Although what if only a minority of classes use it? Certainly we all have had classes where the instructor doesn't use the text they had you buy or not enough to justify the cost.

Clickers/Polling technology

Clickers/Polling technology

I wasn't sure what this technology was going to be until I looked it up. Surprisingly I had heard of this technology before and was quite interested in it. Clickers and pollers are used in class to assess the class' understanding as a whole on a certain topic or even to allow the class to direct the flow of the class through voting. Basically clickers and pollers allow the class to vote or answer question during class. These are tallied in real time and are available for the instructor to make decisions in class, perhaps reviewing a topic in a different way if most students responded incorrectly. I'm always interested in the cost of technology and its effectiveness. This technology is not cheap and may be broken in careless hands. Note most schools have graffiti and I'm sure the same student artists would have no problem filling their class time breaking these units. I found this article that made the case to use cell phones in there place to solve this potential problem.

http://themobilelearner.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/polling-by-cell-phone-can-we-completely-by-pass-clickers/

http://news.cnet.com/2300-1041_3-5819187-1.html?tag=mncol

First Post

This is my second blog for class. Hopefully I'll be a little more active than I was before. I'm more of an internal learner, thinking through things on my own rather than openly debating them. With set topics though I'll try to find info that not only interests me but you as well. Perhaps taking a different approach to topic than you may have.