This morning I helped out Jacques, a good friend and colleague, with some classroom technology in a UNC Sociology class. He had set up 4 infrared receivers in strategic places throughout the huge lecture hall so that the 260+ students -- all equipped with remote transmitters -- could fire off an A, B, C, or D answer at the touch of a button to one laptop. Jacque's computer was the "brain" of the whole setup, configured to register each student's response and statistically graph the results.

Jacques did most of the talking, and since I had never worked with the equipment before, I sat behind the laptop, taking cues from him, advancing to the next quiz questions for students to read on the big screen, and monitoring the incoming data from the "E-instruction" devices.

After most of the technical problems were resolved and the students (who were obviously having a grand time waving their little blue remote devices in the air and frantically pushing buttons) were semi-calm, the professor put up a series of questions about an Op-Ed piece in the Raleigh News & Observer. The students were supposed to have read the article and should have been able to correctly answer the questions posed. The article, apparently, was about poverty, single mothers, and one person's feelings about such topics. (About all I took away from the hour was that minimum wage in the U.S. is $5.15. How anyone can survive on that is beyond me.)

The last "question" for the day (since this was the one class period set aside to get the technology up, running, and tested) is what I want to make note of here. The final slide included a picture of John Kerry speaking in front of a mass of people, below which the statement "This is a picture of the man who will be the next president of the United States" appeared. The answers available for the students to choose on their remotes were A. True and B. False. The professor gave students the option of ditching her class before taking the poll, but before the exodus exactly 126 students voted. When I clicked the "END" button to stop the laptop from accepting answers and the result went up on screen, there was an audible gasp.

The results: John Kerry - 63 / George Bush - 63.

Later, when all the students had filed out, I told the professor that if I had voted there would have been a deciding vote for the good guy. Her vote, too, she said, would have gone to Kerry.

Jacques? Well, being Canadian, he just can't vote.