2009 Horizon Report
If you’re at all interested in technology use in higher education, then you’ll probably want to take a look at the 2009 Horizon Report. This report, issues annually by the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiatve, identifies six emerging technologies “likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations” within the next one to five years. This year’s report features cloud computing, “geo-everything,” the personal Web, semantic-aware applications, and smart objects.
What’s the connection to classroom response systems? One of the technologies identified as likely to go mainstream within the next year is the use of mobiles–devices that can “make phone calls, take pictures, record audio and video, store data, music, and movies, and interact with the Internet.” I’ve written in the past about the use of mobile devices as part of classroom response systems, and the Horizon Report includes a mention of one such application, the Short Messaging Service Response System (SMSRS) developed at SIM University in Singapore. That system uses text-messaging to allow students to submit responses as do other systems. The Horizon Report points out that mobile devices are increasingly capable of having third-party applications installed on them, which allows other ways for them to function as response devices. For example, Abilene Christian University, which has received attention for providing all incoming freshmen this year with iPhones, has developed a custom iPhone application called NANOtool that turns iPhones into “super-clickers.” (I was a little disappointed that the Horizon Report didn’t mention the ACU initiative given how ground-breaking it is.) Additionally, any Web-enabled device can take advantage of Web versions of response systems provided by various vendors.
The Horizon Report provides further evidence that at least some classroom response systems of the future will likely rely on existing mobile devices owned by students rather than on dedicated clicker devices. I’m excited by the possibility of making free-response questions a regular use of classroom response systems, a possibility greatly facilitated by the use of mobile devices.