How I Use It
I used plickers as a formative assessment, but I think it could have other uses such as a daily drill or a classroom poll. After reviewing the homework and doing some practice problems, I wanted to get a temperature check of the whole entire class. So, I assigned a couple plickers questions. It was easy to set up and you can even upload pictures to your questions. This was really helpful because I wanted my students to refer to a diagram to answer questions. Results are instantaneous, so I was able to look at my classes answers and determine what I needed to go back over. The class results show up as a bar graph, but you can also view individual reponses to individualize instruction for a particular student. Two little hiccups I had while using plickers the first time was I forgot to check off the right answer when I created the question, which was my fault. Second for some of the students I had trouble scanning their cards and it took me a couple tries for the scanning to work, this was possibly operator error. Overall it’s a great tool to use and something different that students aren’t use to seeing. The only reason I gave the pedagogy a score of 3 was because the use of plickers didn't necessarily directly deepen my students understanding, but deepened my understanding of where my students were at and where I needed to go from there.
My Take
My students and I both enjoyed using plickers. I’m fortunate to be in a one to one iPad school, all my students and I have iPads. So plickers was very easy for me to use. I think it's great that plickers is accessible to almost everyone, all you need is the plicker cards and an Ipad, Iphone, or Android device. I think plickers overall is a good teaching tool, it can be used as a homework check, daily drill, review tool, or a formative assessment. My students really loved using plickers, I got a lot of ohs, ahs, and “How are you doing that Ms.Allen?!” from students when a check mark would appear next to their names. The students liked the instant gratification of knowing the answer to a question, as well as seeing how the class did as a whole. One feature that may be interesting for plickers to offer is having an electronic option for the code cards, such as a picture students can hold up on their ipads. It just takes some extra time to pass out the plicker cards, having them be electronic would just be a time saver. Overall it’s a great tool and I would highly suggest it to anyone!
