Thursday, June 14, 2007

Exchange Ideas

Please post your ideas about using clickers in your classroom. To begin with I will list a few of the ideas I have picked up from others in my field. These include taking attendance in a class, getting a poll on a current issue in the field, quizzing students on a multiple choice questions and getting feedback on a survey.

6 comments:

Tom Jewell said...

I have been using clickers in the classroom for about two years now. Here are a few of the ways I've used them so far:

--I have a icebreaker exercise I've been using on the first day of class for several years that helps the students see they aren't alone being afraid of public speaking. The exercise is a lot more fun with the clickers!

--I embed questions in my PowerPoint presentations to make sure students understand the material. It helps me know what I'm not making clear or what needs more clarification. Because the students' answers are anonymous, they all participate and they're not afraid of "being wrong."

--When we discuss controversial or subjective issues I poll the class to find out where we stand as a group.

maria said...

Hi everyone,
I a posting on this blog to try it out and to also say how much I enjoyed and learned in our class yesterday. I am excited about this opportunity to use clickers in the classroom. Thanks.
Maria

Natalie said...

Soooooo..... I finally came up with a password that has enough characters that I could remember..... Thank you for the class on Tuesday. I have started a quiz on Nutrition in order to meet your deadline dates and get student feedback. I think the quizzes will promote classroom discussion without embarrassing students.

Natalie said...

I noticed that the time posted is not correct. Can this be fixed?

Natalie said...

I used the clickers after I lectured on two different topics. The students enjoyed using the clickers and appreciated that they were anonymous. I had a "wise guy" click on a totally wrong answer but he told the class that he was just "checking" the clickers out. The students did like using the questions for review before the exam, but they would like me to make the questions more difficult. I did have some technical difficulty...the smiley face did not come up on all the slides for the correct answer. I also would not use the timer again.... I found it distracting and would prefer just to click the mouse to bring up the answer or next slide.
I will work on my questions to make them more difficult/higher level learning.
Thank you for allowing me to participate in the clicker study.

Tom Jewell said...

I agree with Natalie. Unless there's some reason to use the timer--a quiz or whatever--it seems distracting, expecially if you ask questions that you hope the students will want to think about.

I used the clickers recently to start a discussion about interpersonal communication after we watched a movie in class. The questions were based on a paper and pencil questionaire I developed several years ago, which took a long time to administer and even longer to compile to use for discussion. The clickers made it easy to do both!

I asked highly subjective questions about the characters in the movie, which worked perfectly for framing the discussion about attractiveness, self-concept, self-awareness, assertiveness, conflict, and a host of other topics (there were twenty questions). The students got a kick out of the spread of their responses which highlighted the complexity of our communication and relationships with others.

In short, it was fun and it energized the discussion.