I've been looking for something to fill this need for awhile now, but haven't found a decent solution.
We've got students coming to class with web-enabled devices (laptops, iPod Touch, iPhone, smart phones, etc...) and it makes sense to take advantage of this stuff wherever possible. Instead of making students buy and lug around yet another piece of gear, I'm looking for an effective way to provide assessment and response functionality via a web browser.
I don't care if it's a custom app that needs to be installed on a server, or a third party thingamawacky. Just that it's accessible by a browser, and can be used in the context of a class (so, One Big Shared App would need to have rooms or classes or something to help organize the communication). The web interface for the student responses needs to be lightweight - no java, no flash - so that it can run anywhere (or as close to anywhere as is physically possible) and must be easy to use.
Ideally, the web app should do handy things like collecting stats from responses, charting the breakdown of the responses, letting people ask questions to be answered by the class, etc... It should be displayable on The Big Screen from a computer so the class can see the results in a presentation format. Bonus points for storing the responses for later use as well, and providing a downloadable dump of the data for crunching if needed.
Has anyone found anything that serves this purpose?