I have nothing against Wikipedia or Google (my dissertation advisor isn’t grading my blog) and this page I mentioned in the previous post is a great intro to the technology.
Apparently existing clickers do require a piece of hardware to be plugged into the presenter’s workstation, and work wirelessly (RF or IR or Internet). I don’t know how I avoided realising this. There “server” software can be either standalone or a plugin to powerpoint. Cellphone/SMS systems also exist.
According to this study (slides here) the profs love it and the students like it very much. It does increase participation and engagement significantly, and facilitated discussions. They even helped many students concentrate on the material, and the grades showed statistically significant improvement.
Here’s a “clickers are good” PDF. Here’s a nice overview video from a university prof. This is an impressive list of capabilities of one clicker system.
Interesting (sort of funny) critical video of clickers, promoting ResponseWare. “No more 4 different clickers for 4 different classes, cluttering your desk”. Interestingly I can’t find responseware via the Blackberrty store. And I can’t find any info about how the system works, except that it’s web-based on the client, and there are Blackberry/IPhone apps.
Academic papers on the topic (via Liverpool Google Scholar proxy):
Clickers in the large classroom: Current research and best-practice tips
None of the research to date makes it obvious that clickers are in fact as obviously useful as informal surveys suggest. But there appears to be “ample converging evidence” that they are.
Using electronic voting systems in lectures
This one goes over not only the benefits but also the problems, e.g. poor questions will cause frustration rather than participation.