Clickers

We have a new technology here at school that I've been recently trying in my Resource class. This class is aimed at our "bubble students." "Bubble students" are those students who are within a few points of either passing or failing the MCA's. This is a class I volunteered to teach to see if any techniques would help these kids be more successfull during the MCA's. I am soon to find out.

The new technolgy is something called einstruction clickers. Each student is assigned a clicker--it looks like a small remote control. It allows for every student in the class to answer any question you post on the projector in multiple choice format. Their clicker number on the screen changes color when they have sent in their answer.

Then the program shows the answer and the result of the class in bar graph format. This is really quite useful for me. I can see what percentage of the kids are "getting something." They can't lie because the screen shows me if people have guessed incorrectly. When many students have answered incorrecly, I know that I need to spend more time on that particular strand. This system also allows for me to look at which clickers gave the wrong answer. That way I know which kids are doing well and which kids aren't.

These clickers are very expensive and we have only 5 sets in the entire school. As people figure out how to use them, their will probably be fights over them. The kids like them because it is very interactive and their specific results and confidential. Only the teacher gets to see which clicker belongs to which kid and whose scores are whose. While the system is still "putzy," meaning the software that goes with it isn't very user friendly, I can certainly see its usefulness. Too bad we only have a week left to prepare our kids for the MCA's.