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Building an Open Source "Clicker"?
Posted by
Cliff
on Wed Sep 21, 2005 06:56 PM
from the clicky-here-clicky-there-clicky-everywhere dept.
from the clicky-here-clicky-there-clicky-everywhere dept.
fieldtest asks: "Most Slashdot readers have read about "clickers", remote control style devices that students use to wirelessly answer a teacher's questions. Unfortunately, as a college student, I have had less than stellar experiences with these clickers. I hear complaints from my professors and fellow students often as well. So, I want to build an open source clicker system for all universities to use. I believe that this is a prime opportunity to show how powerful free software can be.
So, what do the talented people of Slashdot recommend?"
"The problem is this: a clicker system requires...clickers. What I need are remote controls that have a minimum of 6 buttons (for users to select options with). The sticking point comes when a button is pressed -- the remote must send the option choice, as well as a unique ID specific to the remote, so the clicker software can distinguish between different students.
I've experimented and Googled around. I've tried standard TV remote controls combined with an USB-UIRT receiver, but the range was too low. Googling shows some interesting programmable remotes, but they're far too expensive ($100+) to have each user purchase one.
How should I go about building the perfect clicker and receiver system? Any suggestion is welcome, from IR to radio, from Bluetooth to ZigBee based communications. Recommend a commercial product, or a do it yourself solution. Please also recommend a receiver device, and a way to connect it to a computer. Also, if you recommend that I just build a custom circuit board for the remote control, please give some references and examples of how it should be implemented."
I've experimented and Googled around. I've tried standard TV remote controls combined with an USB-UIRT receiver, but the range was too low. Googling shows some interesting programmable remotes, but they're far too expensive ($100+) to have each user purchase one.
How should I go about building the perfect clicker and receiver system? Any suggestion is welcome, from IR to radio, from Bluetooth to ZigBee based communications. Recommend a commercial product, or a do it yourself solution. Please also recommend a receiver device, and a way to connect it to a computer. Also, if you recommend that I just build a custom circuit board for the remote control, please give some references and examples of how it should be implemented."
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The question is (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The question is (Score:3, Insightful)
This is for students who are in a lecture hall with over 100 other students. There is simply no way the professor can give individual attention to each student. Because of this, clickers are the easiest way for a professor to get a feel for whether or not he is effectively getting his point across.
If 90% of the class answers a question correctly, the professor can feel somewhat confident moving the lesson forward. If only 20% of the class can answer correctly, he knows to spend some more time
Uncorroborated Anecdote... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think these devices are great. I used them in classes in highschool. They greatly improve the efficiency of a classroom environment. They can enable all students to learn, via a distributed Socratic method, as though each had a personal tutor. This type of teaching is unparalleled in efficiency and efficacy. Schools in the near future will have to use them to maintain standards and keep down costs.
Let me give you a personal example. For the year that I attended college, I had a Calculus class. For the most part, the object of this class was to have us memorize as many different estimation methods as possible. I think it was called Calc II. There were around 40 students.
Every class period consisted of the same general routine. The professor would have us turn to a new chapter in our 50 lb book. He would begin to explain whatever new concept he hoped to teach in that hour long class. After about three minutes of explanation, a girl at the back of the class would raise her hand and ask some inane question, usually pertaining to whatever was taught in the last class period. Being the nice helpful teacher that he was, the professor would then spend anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes explaining some concept that most of the class understood to this particular student, almost completely ignoring the day's lesson. At most, the professor usually got about half of each lesson completed before the class was over.
In effect, this one (poor) student got a half hour worth of private tutoring out of each class period. The other 39 students in the class got to figure out the lesson for themselves on their own time, before the next class period, and attempt the homework from their own self-teachings.
Had the professor used some of these devices, or at least a little common sense, he would have been able to judge the rate at which each student was understanding his lessons. Those who didn't keep up could be tutored separately, outside of class. Instead of charging ahead into new, more complex concepts, he could have spent more time on the things he was doing a poor job of explaining. Instead, the class snowballed into a giant clusterfuck of confusion and waste for all involved.
This was an expensive, small private school, yet, apparently, was run by idiots, and happily catered to idiot students.
I was on full academic scholarship as a National Merit Finalist yet, needless to say, I flunked right out. And I have no intention of going back. Tuition rates have doubled. The school is still run by (and filled with) the same idiots. I can seriously get a better education for free, on the damn internet, than I can wasting my time there.
I went to college for an education, not for a social experience, not for psychological evaluation, and not to waste my time. And while, technically, I failed college, in reality college failed me. College failed to provide me with an environment in which I could learn. By the rising tuition rates all over the country, most colleges are failing just as badly as mine was. I didn't need to pay more to have psychologists tell me what I was doing wrong. I needed a professor that would teach instead of waste my time.
So, in conclusion, why don't you just take your ridiculous preconceived notions, and your "let them have psychologists" attitude, and cram them up your ass.
Parent
Re:Uncorroborated Anecdote... (Score:3)
Now, I'm sorry that you had a class with a student who had a hard time with the course work, but at this point you or some other higher than avg. student should have walked up to her after class and offered to be a study partner. Perhaps you would have learned something too.
The use of the clicker does not show if the student comprehends the subject or wishes to contribute to the class an insight or enquire about a finer point, so
Mobile phones! (Score:3, Interesting)
They're full featured, do everything necessary, and in the vast majority of cases STUDENTS ALREADY HAVE THEM.
Unfortunately I'm not aware of it being open source - it was distributed at a conference at the start of September..
Uh, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Students won't go for it. Contrary to popular belief, not all students have or want cell phones. I don't own one and plan on avoiding owning one as long as possible (hopefully until whoever I work for buys me one and pays for it). I'd rather not have to pay yet more money to go to school just so I can answer quizes - books cost enough, thank you very much.
Parent
Re:Uh, no. (Score:3, Informative)
Address space required? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Address space required? (Score:3, Informative)
Clicker: http://www.x10.com/automation/x10_kr22a.htm [x10.com]
Reciever: http://www.smarthome.com/4017.HTML [smarthome.com]
Computer Interface: http://www.smarthome.com/1132U.HTML [smarthome.com].
Mr House software for Linux would also be a good start- it's very scriptable and would eliminate the need to write your own drivers.
Devote time to a better alternative (Score:2, Interesting)
Missing the point, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, as an educator, I would find clickers to be a nuisance, and wouldn't find them useful anyway. It is far more effective to try to interact with the students and understand where their learning is at, individually, then tailor my teaching to whatever common problems or such need the most attention.
Re:Missing the point, really. (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, as an educator, I would find clickers to be a nuisance, and wouldn't find them useful anyway. It is far more effective to try to interact with the students and understand where their learning is at, individually, then tailor my teaching to whatever common problems or such need the most attention.
Where clickers are most useful are in large lecture classes. When you have 100+ students out in the audience, you simply don't have the time to tailyr education to individuals without giving short shrift to a lot of other individuals. It's also frequently very difficult to understand just where the students as a whole are. Clickers, when well used, can help with all of that.
The fact remains, though, that some teachers won't like them. Some, however, do... but would love it if there were an open-source solution, so that we weren't stuck with using the software and such provided.
Parent
Re:Missing the point, really. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Missing the point, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Missing the point, really. (Score:3, Interesting)
But only when they are problems that you should be solving. A problem you can't or shouldn't solve isn't a problem, it's an 'issue.'
And any good system should be able to work around its issues.
Re:Missing the point, really. (Score:3, Interesting)
Students themselves, however, feel very timid about going out on a limb and doing something that might make them look stupid. (As do we all.)
As such, the anonymitiy of the clickers is more for the comfort of the students than it is to save the students from scorn of other students.
Re:Missing the point, really. (Score:5, Interesting)
You'll also not have much of a chance of genuinely assessing how the group of students as a whole are handling the material.
I was the kind of student who'd never ever ask questions, who'd never volunteer answers, and who'd in general just try my best to get the teacher to ignore me because I usually found classes boring.
In a setting like that, having the chance of asking quick control questions that everyone can answer and seeing the results from a whole class in seconds without putting anyone on the spot can be quite helpful... Instead of asking and getting answers from 3-4 people and not knowing whether they're an anomaly or not, you immediately know exactly how many got what you're going through and how many don't...
It helps you tailor your presentation at a much more granular level - being able to skip material everyone understands, or repeat material lots of students have problems with.
With proper use, at the end of it you may end up having more time to spend on interacting with the individual students.
And, as an extra benefit, you'll already have a pretty good record of what they have problems with, that could replace a lot of quizes etc.
I can certainly see teacher abusing them, but I wouldn't discount them so quickly.
Parent
Re:Missing the point, really. (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, it is still up to the instructor to ask the right questions, and give reasonable answers to choose from. And its up to the students to answer honestly when it counts (do you understand this or do we need to cover
Lo-Tech Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Put a giant bar magnet with the north pole facing down in the ceiling.
Give each student a bar magnet. Mark the south pole "yes" and the north pole "no".
Students hold their magnets in the air to indicate the answer.
If the room moves up, the majority of the students chose "yes". If it moves down, the majority of the students chose "no". The more it moves, the more the students are in agreement.
Best of all, the batteries will never die.
Unless you drop the answer sticks.
Re:Lo-Tech Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Here is a better idea:
Enclose the room in a giant coil. Ideally this coil will be of infinite length to get a uniform field, thus giving short students the same vote as taller students. Each student gets to keep their magnet.
At the count of three, each student either points the north pole of their magnet to the front of the room (for yes) or the rear of the room (for no).
The polarity of the current spike induced in the coil indicates the majority yes/no vote. The magnitude can be usd to inicate the strength of the yes/no.
Apart from being fair to short students, this method does better then needing no batteries. It generates power. The power generated can be sold to the electricity grid and the system will eventually pay for itself. Once it has paid for itself the system will return a profit to the university. Surely a good thing in this day and age when Universities are expected to return money from teaching and research?
Parent
OT: Large Helmholtz Coil (Score:3, Interesting)
What he did was take the circumference of the room, and multiply it by 2, and then go out and got two lengths of 50-pair phone cables that long. One he mounted on a raceway on the wall, the other at about floor level. Where the cable
A ribbon cable also works (Score:3, Interesting)
The submitter's real question . . . (Score:3, Funny)
A: "Tell them that I'm gonna make it Open Source!"
Re:The submitter's real question . . . (Score:3, Funny)
Try these Cypress chips (Score:5, Informative)
CY7C601xx
CY7C602xx
About $3-$5 in quantity
Development kit: CY3655 $350
(also check out their wireless USB products)
* Wireless enCoRe(TM) II -"enhanced Component
Reduction"
o Crystalless oscillator with support for an external crystal or resonator. The internal oscillator eliminates the need for an external crystal or resonator
o Configurable IO for real-world interface without external components
* Enhanced 8-bit microcontroller
o Harvard architecture
o M8C CPU speed can be up to 24 MHz or sourced by
an external crystal, resonator, or signal
* Internal memory
o 256 bytes of RAM
o Eight Kbytes of Flash including EEROM emulation
* Low power consumption
o Typically 10 mA at 6 MHz
o 10-A sleep
* In-system reprogrammability
o Allows easy firmware update
* General-purpose I/O ports
o Up to 36 General Purpose I/O (GPIO) pins
o High current drive on GPIO pins. Configurable 8- or 50-mA/pin current sink on designated pins
o Each GPIO port supports high-impedance inputs,
configurable pull-up, open drain output, CMOS/TTL
inputs, and CMOS output
o Maskable interrupts on all I/O pins
* SPI serial communication
o Master or slave operation
o Configurable up to 2-Mbit/second transfers
o Supports half duplex single data line mode for
optical sensors
* 2-channel 8-bit or 1-channel 16-bit capture timer. Capture timers registers store both rising and falling edge times
o Two registers each for two input pins
o Separate registers for rising and falling edge capture
o Simplifies interface to RF inputs for wireless
applications
o Internal low-power wake-up timer during suspend
mode
o Periodic wake-up with no external components
* Programm
Open-source, royalty-free, wireless solution (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, this is a poor solution (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't like to feel stupid, especially in front of their peers. If a professor is trying to find out if her students know something and asks for hands, you get three different groups
Clickers let the professor get high response rate with anonymity. There's a lot of hate on /. for these things, but used properly (and I've seen it done many times) they're a great tool
Parent
Re:Actually, this is a poor solution (Score:3, Informative)
The only place that I've seen these clickers marketed to is huge freshman classes where everyone still acts like they're in high school anyway. The students either grow up or get out after the first couple semesters anyway.
Clickers are a solution looking for a problem.
Re:Actually, this is a poor solution (Score:5, Informative)
Clickers are a solution looking for a problem.
In fact, research has shown that using clickers to help enable "Peer Instruction" techniques can greatly improve the quality and durability of learning.
Hopefully, some empirical evidence outweighs what you think ought to be true.
Parent
Re:Actually, this is a poor solution (Score:5, Informative)
The future majors will probably do just fine anyway -- it's the history majors in astronomy class, or the engineers in art history class, who need help. The clickers have been shown to help those students focus and assimilate material.
Parent
Wireless? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wireless? (Score:3, Informative)
My question is why does it HAVE to be wireless? why couldn't you add it on to the desks/tables/etc.? it'd be much simpler/cheaper to design it to work over wires (though it would still take alot of wires for a sufficiently large classroom). This would prevent any problems with range or interference from other students that IR or RF can have.
Yipers. You're talking about redesigning a room. With a wireless solution, you can bring stuff in and just set it up. The most work you'll have to do is hang wire
Re:Wireless? (Score:5, Funny)
Have people point to the area they want. roughly count the dots.
Anonymous too: it's hard to tell in a room of 100 students where 1 in patricular is pointing to.
Of course, this could also be used as a mass weapon against a professor who insists on lecturing until the very last minute of class, and _then_ giving out the assignment for next class.
Parent
the problem with clickers (Score:3, Insightful)
For those 100 or 200 level classes with 200+ people in them, one might argue that it would be beneficial to maintain order. But the reality of the situation is that you'd have to give out clickers to every student, then train the professors how to use them. And seriously, folks, most professors aren't going to give a damn about learning to use these, especially those older ones with tenure who were born before Christ walked the earth. So they're most likely going to ignore them anyway. The other disadvantage is that these things would break down, and probably frequently. Students themselves wouldn't know how they work (properly, being the key word here). When they think they know how it works, the darn thing will break, and have to get fixed. IT departments are just going to love these things! LOL
Re:the problem with clickers (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
ZigBee (Score:5, Insightful)
You could use USB for the interface back to a piece of host software on a regular computer. There are lots of cheap microcontrollers with USB interfaces built in, and they even come with reference firmware and drivers. USB is an incredibly easy bus from a hardware circuit perspective too.
Combine that with pcb123.com and a couple hundred dollars for boards and parts, and you've got your clickers. The only hard part will be finding some kind of plastic case to put them in that will be durable enough for classroom use. You can save money by not soldering the USB connector onto all the boards.
How often do they use these??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ummm... (Score:3, Insightful)
TI-83s (Score:3, Informative)
The subjects in which clickers are mainly used (physics, engineering), everyone already has a graphical calculator, and they're generally of either HP or TI variety. Thus you only have two (ok maybe 3, TI-85 line is quite different from 83's), but then you have no mandatory extra cost to the student, since everyone in these disciplines has a suitable calculator already.
No hardware issues, no support issues, you basically just wire a minijack to every seat, and you're set.
I know the physics program at uiuc has experimented with this about 5 years ago, prior to them becoming the new fad. You probably want to check with their physics education group http://www.physics.uiuc.edu/research/per/ [uiuc.edu]
about the plus/minuses with it. IIRC they eventaully went with commercial clickers -- I'm pretty sure there's a good reason why, you probably should check with them.
Unlike the majority of these posts that you're going to read from
You do not need a hard coded ID for the clicker. (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, I would have a button on the clicker with a label like "begin session" which would cause the device to generate a UUID for the session.
Alternatively you may want to take each measure independently in which case you can create the UUID for each button press.
It is preferred that you have a MAC address to create a UUID, but you don' t necessarily have to have one. Some classes of UUIDs do not require a MAC. Alternatively, the device could retrieve a UUID via a transaction when it is activated.
If I were doing this, I would probably write a version of the app for Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm, WinCE, and Symbian.
On the more capable devices, you could make such a clicker pretty sophisticated. For example, it could show the text of the question and whether you have already answered it or not.
I would probably have a Mac/Windows/Linux PC application recording the data for each question. I'd probably set it up to be fed into SPSS or whatever.
Re:You do not need a hard coded ID for the clicker (Score:3, Interesting)
The ID is necessary, how are you otherwise going to prevent a student from voting multiple times (intended or not)? Normal RCs toggle a particlar bit in the code they send each time the button is pressed. This way a receiver can
Re:You do not need a hard coded ID for the clicker (Score:3)
make all clickers 100% identical, simply including the ibutton 3 legged transistor looking serial number chip in the parts count will make each unit have a nice huge unique serial number. coupled with a nice dirt cheap 442mhz transmitter module and your button push simply transmits your serial number and a single byte multiple times the PC on the recieving end (better yet, 4 reciever modules spaced around the room evenly) will sort out the
Re:You do not need a hard coded ID for the clicker (Score:3, Insightful)
No one likes clickers (Score:5, Insightful)
The best solution is to not have any such system and simply DO example problems in lecture. The thing that college lectures lack is not something captivating (like hitting the button on a remote is actually captivating...) or innovative, but BETTER LECTURES. Period. Lecturers tend to go over things in too much of an 'overview' format (at least in the science/tech classes) and avoid doing actual example problems that might help us LEARN.
Instead of throwing materials and problems at students and saying 'Here go study and come take my test later', lecturers should try to teach the students legitimately and AIM to improving their testing performance...right now, all it feels like is that I am paying 20k a year for taking a few tests. A f***ing remote control won't solve this issue of boring, shitty lectures.
Re:No one likes clickers (Score:3, Insightful)
The best solution is to not have any such system and simply DO example problems in lecture.
If only.
There is a lot of research that backs up the effectiveness of "active learning." You don't really learn something until your brain has to actively grapple with it.
There is an "old" model of education whereby the professor presents the material and the students learn by listening. In practice, this does not work so well-- and educational research has shown this. This is true even when professors do e
Yummy, a problem desiring a solution! (Score:4, Informative)
Alright.
First, a normal infrared remote won't work. You'll need a custom programmed microcontroller remote and a receiver to handle such. In order for the receiver to detect all the remote's answers (given a one way system) each remote, when the button is pressed, would send its message, pause a random amount of time, send again, pause random again, etc. This would go on for a second or so during and after the button press so the receiver has a chance to catch it in the midst of all the other remotes sending their data. The data burst would have to be *very* short to increase the bandwidth and decrease the collision rate.
A one-way RF system would be very similar.
If you do a two way radio, there are a few more options. Ideally you'd do a two-way network (such as zigbee) since it would be very expandable - it could accept a variety of clickers from the simple credit card remote to the full keyboard and display.
A simple 2.4GHz custom network could be designed using Nordic Semiconductor's nrf series of chips. The nRF24E1 chip would be perfect - includes microcontroller, 2.4GHz transceiver, and is very low power.
-Adam
schoolforge.net? opensourceschools.org? (Score:3, Informative)
I think that St Francis Xavier physics http://www.stfx.ca/ [www.stfx.ca] was looking at a WiFi system that was pretty inexpensive, and I remember UIUC physics doing some investigation of building their own.
Keypads? (Score:3, Interesting)
And, if you still needed some # of wireless devices, they could be easily tied into the same system.
http://www.crestron.com/ [crestron.com]
http://www.humaneinterface.com/ [humaneinterface.com]
Bluetooth + IR + cell phones /w T9 or QWERTY? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:different tack (Score:3, Insightful)
So, it appears that all you'd need is to hotwire a single clicker into transmitting continuously, and it would inhibit all the others.
Of course, your idea of crashing the software is cute, but it just takes one software patch and you're back to the drawing board. Attacking the RF layer is more like