The First 100 Posts

I’ve hit a bit of a milestone here on the blog.  You’re now reading my 100th post.  I started this blog last summer after I finished writing my book as a way to stay current with the literature and news surrounding classroom response systems.  At that time, I set a goal to post 100 times in the first year.  It feels great to have achieved that goal.

What’s happened in the last year?

I’ve reviewed 23 research articles and a few published case studies.  I’ve commented on articles and essays appearing in Inside Higher Ed, the New York Times, the Encyclopedia Brittanica blog, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.  I’ve reported from the EDUCAUSE national conference, the University of Louisville clickers conference, the Joint Mathematics Meetings, and the Abilene Christian University ConnectEd Summit.  I’ve posted two podcast episodes.  I was interviewd by Inside Higher Ed, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the National Teaching & Learning Forum. And, oh yeah, my book came out!

I’ve also raised a few questions that are still open:

• Are there differences in the impact of the use of clickers between male and female students?
• What impact might teaching with clickers have on students with learning disabilities?
• Who were the early pioneers in the use of electronic classroom response systems?

There were a few important national developments, too.  Cell phones turned into commonly used response devices.  Abilene Christian University, among other schools, launched iPhone initiatives, raising the idea of using mobile phones as “super-clickers.”  Twitter hit the scene in a major way, functioning as a classroom response system in its own way.

Thanks to Google Analytics, I can share a few fun facts about hits on this blog:

• The blog has received over 17,000 pageviews in the last year.  That works out to about 1440 a month on average.
• The most popular posts (in terms of pageviews) have been The Costs (and Benefits) of Clickers, A Few Question Banks, Article: Stowell & Nelson (2007), Clickers and Student Gender, and Clicker Conference: Tim Stelzer Keynote.
• The most popular categories of posts have been Question Banks, Formative Assessment, Critical Thinking, Student Participation, and Mathematics.

I’m grateful to all my readers and to those who have left comments here.  As you can tell, I find teaching with classroom response systems a fascinating topic, and I’m excited to explore the technology and pedagogy–and to see what comes next.  Thanks for being a part of that.