Please read the Vanderbilt website on clickers http://www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/resources/teaching_resources/technology/crs.htm
By Thursday October 14, please add your comments. In the comments section of this post, write one new thing you learned from this webpage.
I think that using CRS in a classroom is such an advantage to the teacher. It’s so important to check for understanding and to know whether or not the students are following along with all of the information. Using a CRS is such a data-driven, efficient way of getting information about the students' knowledge. One thing that I learned after reading this article is that you can ask critical thinking questions using this system. I thought that the clickers were used more for simple, multiple choice questions, so the ability to ask critical thinking questions was new to me. I also think it would be such a time-saving feature to be able to use this system to take attendance. I had never thought of using CRS to take attendance, and I think that would be so accurate and efficient!
ReplyDeleteSome of the ways a clicker could be used were sort of intuitive, but I liked the different ideas that were presented. One thing I did not think of would be having an easy record for attendance if each student was assigned a unique clicker. I also appreciated the focus of the varying levels of Bloom's taxonomy that could be reached with even a multiple choice question on the clicker and that would be something I would have to consider if I ever used a clicker in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteLike Tara and Joe, I was impressed with all of the ideas for different ways you can use clickers in the classroom. However, the part that worries me the most is the challenges. I have been in undergraduate classrooms where we used clickers and invariably there would be an issue where a few students could not connect with the rest of the class or the question set would not load. My cooperating teacher actually tried to use clickers for a lesson earlier this year and faced similar problems. So far, they have been more trouble than good.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it was just that the users were not experts on the clicker system, but in my limited experience with clickers I think it would take some extensive training for teachers to have adequate knowledge of the system before they were effectively implemented in the classroom. They need to be more user-friendly. In addition to that, the other challenges in question-writing and not being able to pinpoint students’ misunderstandings were interesting issues.
I agree with Ray that although there are some advantages to the clickers, I, personally, am not patient with technical difficulties. I think in a high school class, this lag could cause more disruption than good.
ReplyDeleteI have never used clickers before but I did like some of the ideas that they posed such as using them for recall questions at the beginning of class as a refresher from the class period before. I also think that they would be a good way to maintain student attention during lectures by having questions pop up every so often that the students would have to respond to. And, my favorite, is encouraging participation of all students, even the shy and unsure ones.
I believe that question writing may be difficult. In science, we really want more than a yes/no answer. It seems that the clickers are only good for getting a discussion started. I can do that on my own.
The one use that came to my mind would be using it as discipline option. I was called into watch a class of very disruptive students and thought that a "jury of the peers" would be a great option for this class. The students, anonymously can vote for the punishment of their peer. There would have to be a premade list by the students first and the offender would be allowed to defend him or herself prior to the voting.
The best thing that would take place is that each student would be engaged. With this device you can get real time feedback from every student on every question. I think that is huge! Attendance would be nice but also think about the grading difference when the system can grab the information and catalog it by the students name already graded and collect them in a file.
ReplyDeleteThe drawback is obviously the plan time that is going to accompany the new lessons you will have to develop or the new questions you will have to write in the software. All in all I think it is a great idea and if budget allows it I would like them in my room.
I can imagine several useful applications of "clickers" in the classroom. Perhaps the most obvious is a means for measuring prior knowledge before beginning a unit, such as asking a series of questions on the upcoming unit to measure the prior knowledge of the overall class. Checking for understanding during a lesson/unit, as well as keeping students engaged during more passive lessons, are other useful applications.
ReplyDeleteCRS would also be useful in terms of warm-up activities at the beginning of class, or even extension activities at the end of a period. I particularly like the idea of using CRS to present higher-order questions to the class. For example, using multiple choice questions where each answer has at least some merit (no answer is "right") in order to stimulate class discussion. An extension of this concept might include "choose your own adventure"-style scenarios that the class would complete as a collective.
I think the idea of using a clicker is great, it saves time and engage students however the lack of training, technical difficulties may have a negative side effect. In the classroom that I am observing our teachers use software SIMS for attendance and it works perfectly. As for using clickers in the high school I am not sure if all the students will use it appropriately. I have seen students just trying to damage the computers in classrooms so the teachers using the clickers should be really be concerned. In this hard economy and budget cuts I bet all the school districts wants to save money and using clickers in this situation may or may not be relevant.
ReplyDeleteUsed effectively, clickers could increase student engagement. Planning for the use of clickers would be essential to seamless implementation. I see assessing student learning and making learning more fun as 2 of the better uses of the technology. Some kids may be too shy to speak in class, so CRS gives them a means of participating and engaging.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I learned was the relationship between CRS and Blooms taxonomy. This will be critical to ensure a proper hierarchy of questioning that is appropriate for the learning taking place.
There were a number of clicker uses that I didn't know about. I thought the primary use was akin to a multiple choice test.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite use was Contingent Teaching where the instructor is able to check student learning an adjust and augment the lesson to address students' needs. To me, this makes it simpler for students to work in teams and assist one another in learning. Teachers don't have to wait for testing or for problems to arise to gauge student comprehension. This would be especially helpful to me in literature classes where quizzes can only cover small segments of a novel.
The CRS is a great way to check for understanding. I have never used a clicker system before, but an extremely interested in using one for my classroom. I did not know that CRS could be used to sort of "choose your own adventure." I think this would be a great way to explore different aspects of biology especially the cell, the cell cycle, meiosis, etc. Before I only thought that you could use them for multiple choice like questions. I think CRS would create a very engaged learning classroom where students would be able to focus on gaining knowledge and move away from prior knowledge. It will also help gage their understand of the content being covered.
ReplyDeleteI think using CRS in a classroom would be more beneficial to Korean students than to any other students because Korean students are shy in classrooms and feel uncomfortable when they speak up to express their thoughts and opinions. If they had CRS to give their answers silently and privately, they would learn better by actively participating in classroom activities and engaging in the teacher’s instruction more attentively. It would be true that teachers who use CRS in classrooms have more work to do such as checking if the technology is working properly, creating effective CRS questions and incorporating them to lesson plans.
ReplyDeleteI've never used clickers before, either as an instructor or a student. However, I am intrigued by all the ways we could implement them. Taking a test via clicker is not something I'd thought of, but I would probably use them more for review or student feedback than anything else.
ReplyDeleteI also am a little hesitant about using them because of the prep time. Kids can get off track pretty quickly, and even if they claim to be easy to use, you always have to schedule time to have technical difficulties.
However, I can see the fun of having a silent count and then working the anticipation in the class through that unknowing. And I could differentiate more successfully with my class and their varying degrees of understanding. This would help me to scaffold more effectively.
Like most others, I think clickers are a great idea. I have yet to use them in my class but I am excited to start. I think one of the problems we could run into is when students are giving you instant feedback as to what they are understanding and what they aren't understanding as well, it may be difficult to make big adaptations during the lesson. Of course it will be very useful to go back and cover specific material that the students are having trouble with, however we probably wont have time to make big adaptations to our lesson. So that is something we will have to think about when using clickers. We will have to put much more time into our planning and create adaptations based off what problems we anticipate our students may have.
ReplyDeleteI think that using CRS is a good way to engage students in the classroom and to see if students do understand what they are doing and what they have been taught. Also using critical thinking in the discussion is always a powerful thing to do in classrooms for learning. I never used any thing like this before and looking foreword to using it in the near future
ReplyDeleteReading this article I learned all the different types of questions that a CRS can be used for. I like how this website gave many examples of the types of activities that can be done using a CRS. Clickers are a great tool teachers can use to get instant feedback from the students. It can also be used to check for understanding during class. Clickers keep the students engaged and participating in class. One of the challenges I am worried about when using clickers is having technical difficulties. I don't have a lot of patience when it comes to technology. This can take up a lot of time and disrupt the class.
ReplyDeleteI am a big fan of clickers too, and do intend to use them when I take over classes in the spring. That said, it had not occured to me to use them for taking attendance. This might be more applicable in college courses, but who knows what the future will hold for secondary classrooms!
ReplyDeleteClickers were very helpful to a lot of my chemistry professors in college. It gives the teacher immediate feedback on whether a majority of the class understands the concept that we are covering. However, a major concern for me would be either boring students who understand or reexplaining something over and over again because of the answers from the clickers. That student that continues to get the answer "wrong" may simply not understand the question.
ReplyDeleteSomehow my comment is lost or was never posted. I remember when I wrote m comment,the UNOmaha site was hard to access, there may have been an internet crash, sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteWhat I wrote before was a description of an innovative method to check for understanding. In case your school budget may not allow the purchase of clickers. You can use a sheet of paper that is divided into four sections and each section has one of four colors; red, green, blue, yellow or any other four colors that you like. In the center of each section write letters A-D in a large bold font. The sheet is then folded into halves twice where only one of the four sections shows at a time. Students can use this to show what is their selection to answer multiple choice questions by holding the folded sheet of paper showing the section with the letter that corresponds to what they believe is the correct response. The teacher can then easily see the responses by comparing colors. I tried this method and it works goof for multiple choice, yes or no and true or false questions but will not work for short answers.