Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Click for participation
The NY Times ran an article about a new technologies in college classroom: the clicker. Although this technology is not entirely new, its use in the classroom is slowly gaining ground, where each student has one. Professors can poll the class, take attendance, and instantly gauge comprehension of the day's lesson. This may bring the professors closer to the edge of their audience. As a teacher, you typically guess as to how much students understand by their level of engagement in class and your suspicions are reinforced (or disproved) when the tests and papers are corrected. With this tool, teachers are able to quickly identify gaps in comprehension without grading numerous papers. This means they can adjust their teaching immediately. Of course, this means they also have to ask the right questions.
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This seems like a great idea. I think the story about how students were sending in their clickers with other students to skip class and still get participation was a creative idea! The article mentions that ipads and a few other devices can be converted to be used for clickers. I think that if this idea is successful, most devices will be convertible to these "clickers" with just an app, eliminating the need to purchase a whole new device. This will also likely eliminate the possibility of sending your clicker in with another student as most students will not want to give up their smartphones.
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