Clickers in Chapter 10

I decided that for this last chapter, I would focus on what interested me the most, the Clicker Assessment Tools. The first thing that they reminded me of was the show “who wants to be a millionaire” when the contestant chooses to ask the audience.  Everyone gets a chance to be part of the game, by choosing an answer that gets polled and displayed on the main screen.  I had no idea that these Clickers are being used in elementary through college-level classes. I think that it is a great way to engage students in learning, let them have a little fun, and make use of technology in the class. These could also increase classroom involvement because in many of my classes I have witnessed the teacher asking a general question, and the students rarely responding. With the Clickers they reduce the chance of shy students not participating with the collective class. They were also described in the text s being intrinsically motivating, and appealing for students to use. Another interesting point that I found was that clickers allow those “who normally lose the opportunity to answer questions to those who raise their hands quickly” (p.233). The professors can also gain valuable statistics perhaps for their thesis by asking their class questions to gain specific statistics on that demographic. Clickers provide for fast, easy and reliable results. While reading about how great these clickers were, the thought in the back in my mind was that they were surely expensive. The text surprised me by writing that they range in price from $6 to $60 dollars each. Discounts are also available to large orders so they would be very affordable to use in schools.  With technology rapidly evolving, some systems are incorporating a confidence level feature that allows students to input their confidence level along with their answer. I think that the Clickers would be best used for close-ended questions, or general polls. They would not work well for questions that asked for a lot of detail as then it would make them more difficult to use then easy. For younger children as the text suggest they would probably be best used in a game, as something fun to do that can help them expand their experience with technology as well as prepare them for later use in answering questions.  What I really like about technology and everything I have been learning about in this course so far is that teachers are learners too along side of their students. Everyone is given the chance to grow together regardless of their starting point or experience with technology.