You might be familiar with the student response system market, these are the little remotes that students can hold to "vote" or answer multiple choice questions so a teacher and the class can see results instantly. Players in this realm include Turning Technologies, iRespond, and eInstruction, who also integrate their CPS clickers into their InterWrite Mobi portable slate, a pretty unique combination.
But, this post is about everyone's favorite Canadian interactive whiteboard designers, SMART Technologies, as you probably guessed from the title. In a different approach to the student response segment, this week SMART released their new Response CE software, which provides the functions of a clicker, but students answer questions from their computers. Teachers can then see results instantly to assess where the class is on comprehending the topic at hand. Makes sense if you have a 1:1 computing program and you'd rather not have 30 remote controls floating around every classroom to complicate things. Of course, SMART is offering this as just one part of their pretty large stable of products, hoping to be a one stop shop for district customers. It's a good move (notice I didn't say "smart") because there are plenty of competitors out there looking to grab some of SMART's considerable market share in interactive whiteboards, so this product provides yet another weapon in their arsenal. The whiteboard battle continues...
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