Clickers/Polling technology
I wasn't sure what this technology was going to be until I looked it up. Surprisingly I had heard of this technology before and was quite interested in it. Clickers and pollers are used in class to assess the class' understanding as a whole on a certain topic or even to allow the class to direct the flow of the class through voting. Basically clickers and pollers allow the class to vote or answer question during class. These are tallied in real time and are available for the instructor to make decisions in class, perhaps reviewing a topic in a different way if most students responded incorrectly. I'm always interested in the cost of technology and its effectiveness. This technology is not cheap and may be broken in careless hands. Note most schools have graffiti and I'm sure the same student artists would have no problem filling their class time breaking these units. I found this article that made the case to use cell phones in there place to solve this potential problem.
http://themobilelearner.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/polling-by-cell-phone-can-we-completely-by-pass-clickers/
http://news.cnet.com/2300-1041_3-5819187-1.html?tag=mncol
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Clickers/Polling technology
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5 comments:
At first I thought Polling/Clicker technology is only used in Suvey for event like presidential election. I rarely see such technology used in class settings in China. Anyway, it is surprised to learn that rental fee of one clicker could be as high as $5 per day. Yeah, I agree with you that it is better to utilize gadgets that students and teacher already know, such as cellphone or computer to achieve such polling function than using specific tools.
I just found out that polling/clicker technology are also known as Personal Response System. One of the advantages is teacher/presenter may get quick response from students/ audience. It also ensured public anonymity as well. So, it surely facilitate any student or audience who is not confident to speak in public. However, the downfall is, it doesn't train the student/ audience to share their opinion in class, as well as being accountable for what they have stated.
Andrew, I found a good article about Clicker technology. This is the link :
http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:fNJ6p5Do5sgJ:www.uis.edu/its/facultystaff/documents/7thingsclickers.pdf+7+things+you+should+know+about+clicker&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us
If that link does not work, just google-search it : "7 Things You Should Know About Clickers"
I think clickers in class are really fun and easy to use, though I've been on the student side, not the teacher side yet. Utica College just invested in Turning Point- a clicker program with 30 clickers. The inservice I attended with clickers was fun, and generated plenty of classroom discussion- the anonymity of the device wasn't really utilized. Our Health Studies classes often use collaborative quizzes (to train for National Licensing Exams), and these are great for teaching how to take multiple -choice tests, and for eliciting discussion about clinical scenarios.
Yet, they may not be necessary, or even pedagogically sound, as Alan Groveman proports in this article:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/06/19/groveman
The debate continues... but this is one "teaching toy" I plan to use.
hmmm, very good discussions here... when we talk about any technology, we need to consider not only its "affordances"-what it can afford, but also its "constraints"--what issues it might bring to education... Jing
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