On October 8, 2008, Harper College faculty member Chad Taylor demonstrated the TurningPoint Audience Response System (Clicker) to a group of faculty and staff members at the October Bites and Bytes session. During this discussion Chad told the audience about his experiences using clickers in the classroom as he helped facilitate a year-long pilot study of the system. Chad was joined by Tushar Patel from Information Technology (IT). Tushar has been instrumental in the selection and implementation of clickers at Harper. Chad and Tushar demonstrated the Turning Point clicker system and answered several questions regarding this exciting and innovative classroom technology.
Participants were given the opportunity to try out clickers by participating in a hands-on activity. Participants were also informed that the Harper College Information Technology Department recently updated all college faculty workstations so that each station now contains a copy of the TurningPoint Audience Response Software. Additionally, IT is currently in the process of outfitting each classroom on the main campus with TurningPoint Audience Response hardware. The end result being that in the very-near future all Harper College faculty members will be able to utilize clicker technology in every classroom on campus.
Note: If you would like to hear the audio of this meeting simply click on the link below to download a 43-minute MP-3 recording (5 meg). Download “Clickers” Audio
So, What Is An Audience Response Unit Anyway?
Response Card
A clicker is a hand-held, wireless device that is used by a student to submit a response in a classroom. Classroom presenters typically use a modified PowerPoint presentation to ask questions and to register the responses and/or gather data from students for a variety of situations. Students can reply to questions with “Yes” or “No”, numerical input, or by submitting text. Clickers can be used to gather data for attendance, opinions, quizzes, testing, and so on. If a presenter does not wish to utilize a modified PowerPoint presentation then he/she has the option to download and use a free software application program called TurningPoint Anywhere. This application permits the presenter to poll an audience from almost any Windows-based application and display immediate results. This allows for instantaneous feedback for the presenter and participants. It also helps keep the audience engaged by displaying the input that received from the participants.
More Information
You can learn more about the Turning Point Audience Response System by visiting their website at www.turningtechnologies.com . For more information regarding the implementation of this system at Harper College, please contact: Tushar Patel at (847) 925-6387 or at tpatel@harpercollege.edu
Kevin 
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