The acquisition of Learning Catalytics to Pearson Education could mean some really exciting things for education worldwide. I used Learning Catalytics during semester 2 of 2012. I must say that it was the most impressive system for student response that I have come across, after quite some research. Brian Lukoff was prompt to answer any question via email and my Principal was impressed with their workshop at BLC 2012 headed by Alan November (a simply inspirational educator). The ability for the system to automatically pair students near each other for discussion after noticing one has the correct question and their peer has an incorrect question is very powerful for teachers. I am no longer using Learning Catalytics and I miss its ability to do a plethora of things. My personal favourites were automatically doubling up questions in order to foster discussion and peer instruction during the second time around, and the drawing ability was great for sketching graphs of straight lines and parabolas in my extension year 8 class.
I hope that Pearson unleashes this powerful tool in a cost effective way for the world to use in the near future. Eric Mazur and Brian Lukoff have built an incredible educational tool.
In the meanwhile, I will continue to use the free system Socrative which has a lot of features for a free eClicker system. I do unfortunately, have to create each question twice in order to implement Peer Instruction during my classes, it would be great to have a duplicate question feature, as well as real time individual response feedback.
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