Community reviews for Plickers

Overall, this was a great app to use for educators. I would use this tool as a way to test student knowledge before moving on to the next project or assignment in order to assure their understanding. It was easy to understand for both the teacher and the students. It became a game amongst the students, but also a way for the teacher to collect data. Testing became a fun tool for the students and allowed them to engage in the topic. It will definitely make teaching better by allowing them to step out of the norm of mundane education. Collecting the data was easy and it was a great way to instantly get the answers directly from the students, which saved right to my account for collection.

I love Plickers. It is easy to use from both the teacher and student side. It helps teachers get very quick feedback from what students are getting and where they are. It is perfect for quick formative assessments or "ticket out the door" type data. There are tons of online formative assessment tools out there, but not every classroom has access to devices. If you don't have enough devices, Plickers is the perfect solution.

I love this tool and plan to continue to use it in the classroom. The main limitation is that the questions must be multiple choice.

Overall, this is a great tool for a teacher who apprehensive about using tech or does not have a lot of devices available to them. I tried to keep transition time to a minimum by asking students to keep their card at all times. As a teaching tool, I could get swift data on low-level Bloom's questions before moving on. Crafting a high-quality question is essential for this to be effective! My tip: don't laminate the cards (tempting as it is for durability) because it makes it tricky to scan the QR code!

Overall, Plickers is a great tool to use sparingly in your classroom or with your staff to mix up your formative assessment, test review, and to get instant feedback. I like that you can save results, compare classes, and get a graph representation of the data. When used every now and then, like maybe a few times per unit, it is really motivating and engaging for students. It takes a little practice to get your set-up ready to go in the classroom- you have to see your computer screen to start quizzes, students have to see the questions on a projector of some sort, and you have to have your phone ready to go. A very basic level of comprehension is required for students (multiple choice and T/F), however the teacher can create reflection questions and attempt to reach that higher level of processing.

Plickers is an effective tool for formative assessment. My students are engaged and highly motivated to solve the math problems I have assigned because of the process and the private feedback they receive. The letters on the cards are quite small and offer a degree of privacy which encourages risk-taking and full participation. I like the immediacy of the feedback and the ability to preload my own questions, although it would be helpful if there were a searchable database of questions that teachers could access too. There have been problems for teachers mastering both the app and web tool interfaces and getting them to communicate properly. If the cards are not kept clean and held flat on just the edges, they may not scan. Teachers can experiment with the smaller and larger cards to see which works best for their class size, but do not laminate them. There are coated cards available for purchase, but I find the free cards work fine.

I like the fact that students don't need devices for this tool. So many things require students to have a cell phone, and I hate to single out the students who need to borrow someone else's device. The "paper clickers" put all students on the same playing field. Of course, this does necessitate more set-up time for the teacher. I print the papers, upload my class list, and make sure the correct student gets his/her designated plicker. I've seen that many teachers have students tape their plicker into a notebook and re-use them over and over. Creating the questions takes a little bit of time, but I like that the website allows teachers to build a library of questions and to sort them into different folders. It would be fairly easy to re-use questions among classes and from year to year. I was also impressed with how well my phone could read the responses around the room. I can display a table showing whose answer has been recorded (without showing my class their peer's responses), so it's easy to make sure everyone responds. I also like that the display can show the correct answer as well as a graph of how the class as a whole responded if I choose. Getting more feedback from my students and more data on their understanding will help me to correct errors and re-teach confusing concepts more effectively.

I think this is a great product but not practical for me. I think it would work well if you only had 30 students.

The kids see it as a game! It is an amazing way to review material.

I like Plickers primarily as a formative assessment tool. I like that it is is free, and that data can be instantly recorded when technology isn't readily available to all students. Some colleagues who have used it are concerned that using the app on their phone in class uses their data when wifi isn't strong or available. I like that this can be used to immediately tell whether a student has the concept, so if it is done as an exit ticket, groups can be formed for the next day's instruction based on the results. Having a record of these results will be helpful in tracking growth in a particular skill/concept if the skill/concept is reassessed. Keep in mind that to use this as a whole class experience, the types of questions that can be asked would have to be limited to ones that are short, with answers that are short since you are expecting the students to hold up their responses at approximately the same time. Questions that ask facts or vocabulary work perfectly. Opinion questions work well too if the goal was to promote discussion on a topic. If you wanted to used Plickers to record the responses for longer questions, or questions that asked about a student's reading comprehension, students could work at their own pace recording answers on an answer sheet, then hold up their responses when all students were finished. Overall, if Plickers is used to inform instruction and/or tot rack growth, it can be a wonderful tool, but to use it just as a novelty may not be worth the effort required to set it up.