iPhones as Super-Clickers

Jeff Young blogged about Abilene Christian University’s iPhone initiative yesterday on the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Wired Campus blog focusing on the iPhone application ACU has designed that enables iPhones to function as “super-clickers,” a term used by William Rankin, an English professor at ACU. (I see myself using the term “super-clickers” very often in the future.)

The software can quickly sort and display the answers so that a professor can view responses privately or share them with the class by projecting them on a screen. For open-ended questions, the software can display answers in “cloud” format, showing frequently-repeated answers in large fonts and less-frequent answers in smaller ones.

I saw the ACU NANOtool application in action at the EDUCAUSE conference back in October, and I was impressed.  I’m glad to see the classroom repsonse system aspect of ACU’s iPhone initiative getting a little more press coverage.  Faculty at ACU have found that this use of iPhones can transform the classroom dynamic in productive ways.  The use of a word cloud to display student answers to free-response questions is sensible yet innovative.

ACU is hosting an iPhone-in-higher-education conference they’re calling the ConnectEd Summit in February 2009.  Two of the conference tracks focus on educational uses of iPhones in and out of the classroom.  See the conference Web site for more information and to register.  I’m hoping to go to the conference, but travel budgets aren’t what they used to be.  If you know of any good funding sources, feel free to email me.