Neal+-+Clickers+in+College

//Welcome! You have arrived at....// =Clickers in College by Phyllis Neal=

The topic I chose for my presentation is the use of clickers in the college classroom. I have not used clickers before, but have an interest in incorporating them into my classroom. After finding a set in my institutions archives, I decided to learn how they work and have done research on their effectiveness and the pedogogical reasons behind their use. The set I found is outdated. I needed to contact the company to download updated software, the usb adapter needed to be brought up to date, and I needed to replace many batteries! This is a basic set. I would want a set that is more sophisticated to allow for more options and higher level of learning methods. Once I become skilled in their use, I will introduce the clickers to the faculty at my school in an effort to encourage more technology in the classroom.

View my presentation here. After the two segments of my presentation are slides with videos of clicker use in various settings and a couple fun videos of what a classroom looks like without clickers!
[|clicker components] [|clicker set-up demonstration]

**Content uses of this technology:**
This basic clicker system allows for several uses. It can be used to take attendance, poll students, check for student understanding, generate a survey with results and/or graphs to display, provides instant feedback to students, initiates group interaction and engagement, and others. It is a system originally designed to be used in a large group setting to improve student engagement and interaction (think of college lecture halls with 200+ students). While useful there, it is also a technology that can be used in a smaller group setting for the same purpose. The system I will talk about uses infra-red signals with a USB attachment to a receiver. There are systems that use infra-red devices with wall mounted receivers, radio-frequency devices, and in the future (if not already) the ability to use the cell phone as a clicker device.

Pedagogical Considerations for this technology:
While the initial purpose of the clicker system may have been student engagement and interaction, they have come a long way since then. The newer clicker sets have the ability to perform the above mentioned actions as well as allow for short answer questions, instant graphs after the polling to show where your answer stands in comparison to the the rest of the class, the ability to post grades from tests/quizzes directly to a grading system like Springboard or Blackboard, fantastic report making, question banks, various graphing capabilities and others. Many of the featurs of a clicker system tend to be at a substitution or augmentation level of our SAMR model. I believe it has the ability to provide a higher level of use with more ranges of clicker functionality. One could always use a clicker system for student engagement, but overuse may defeat that purpose. I think two of the best uses of this system is the ability to elicit from the students answers to a sensitive topic, anonymously and in real-time, and also, to immediately assess where the students are in their understanding of the material. It also can serve as a great discussion starter if used to generate responses individually, then have students discuss in groups the answers that were given, then re-assessing. It also is great to use as an ice-breaker feature in eliciting demographic information from a large class so students can see how they compare to others in their class. Please look at some of the videos embedded in the PowerPoint to see how it could be used in the classroom.

Where to purchase a clicker set:
OSU: Information on clickers, costs, and what set you should purchase:[] This is a great informational site on clickers in general. Klickerz: [] Reply Systems: [] Turning Technologies: []