Anyone who has ever attended a conference, lecture, meeting or class that required a show of hands for voting purposes knows how long, in capital letters LONG; it can take to vote on a series of topics or even vote on candidates to elect a new officer for a group.
And that process can of course, even turn out to be a longer one still if everyone attending a meeting has to fill out a succession of paper forms to express their opinion on a subject – one certainly wants to have plenty of coffee on hand for people participating in a paper ballot process!
And as it turns out the sometimes extremely long and drawn out process of voting by hand or by paper may be a thing of the past! Now there is a faster way to gather people’s opinions while meeting in a large group. There is a device called a “Clicker” that looks like a small TV remote and allows group participants to quickly express their opinion in answer to a question, or even to select a candidate to vote for by wirelessly sending their responses to a computer. Clickers are being used in schools, churches and by many different groups at many meetings and conferences held across the country today.
And the New York Times has a neat article, titled Speak Up? Raise Your Hand? That May No Longer Be Necessary, on the subject of Clickers that gives an even more detailed account about their increasing usage in American life.
Here’s the link to the article:
Enjoy your rainy spring Saturday everyone!
Linda R.
Tech & Book Talk at SSCL 