One of the many things teachers are faced with in the classroom is the challenge of getting all students to participate. In addition to that, we aren’t always sure whether our assessment methods, informal or formal, really tell us whether or not our students understand the concepts we teach. These two challenges, participation and assessment, are essentially the core of what clickers accomplish. Also known as student response systems, classroom performance systems or audience response systems, all clickers allow the participant to send their responses to a given question or survey while remaining anonymous to his or her classmates. They are particularly useful for things like multiple choice or true and false questions. They can also be used as a means to facilitate discussion when used to survey a class based on a given topic.
The video below provides a very short demonstration on the two essential ingredients in a clicker system: a clicker and the receiver. The tutorials that follow will give you the basics on setting up the clicker system with the software that it comes with. While there are many companies that offer their own version of the clicker, the video and tutorials are specific to the Classroom Performance System offered by eInstruction.
Click on the play button for a short demonstration on a clicker and receiver.
If you have a set of clickers and a receiver, please download the software you’ll need to get started.
To download the software, click HERE.
After you have installed the software and have your receiver connected to your computer, you’ll need to set up a few things to make sure that data can be received by the software. To see the procedure, view the tutorial below.
To see how to set up the receiver, clicker and software, click HERE.
After you have created your first database and have set up the hardware properly, you’ll need to begin creating activities or lessons for your students. eInstruction has some incredible tutorials that will teach you everything from setting up your class roster to various ways of engaging your students with clickers.
To check these amazing tutorials out, click HERE.