Student Response Systems

CLICKERS

My school is located in the Miami-Dade County School District.  It serves students in grades six through eight with diverse backgrounds.  This school is impressive with their curriculum of the International Baccalaureate, (IB) Middle Years Program.  This program serves the high achieving students of which more than seventy-five percent of the students score at or above mastery in reading, mathematics and science.  The school also has a regular population of classes for the remaining students.

The staff at my school provides high quality service the students, parents and the community.  With a student population of 1175 students, the teacher student ratio is sixteen to one.  Approximately seventy-five percent of the students are Hispanics, sixteen percent black, eight percent white and two percent other.  There are also English language learners and students with disabilities.  To continue with providing students and opportunity to excel and keep up with 21st Century technology, my school will benefit from the use of Student Response Systems.

The focus at my school is on curriculum with technological instructional programs to motivate students to explore new ideas.  We are dedicated to maintaining the highest academic standards through creative educational strategies with the use of technology.   Our Students have the opportunity to grow academically and personally as they’re faced with important challenges in today’s society.  I have high expectations for all of my students.   The current practices at my school can be enhanced with the use of Student Response Systems.  All students can benefit from employing the use of Clickers as it is increasingly more interactive for them.

I can create technology based assessments with the use of clickers for daily lessons.  Teachers can also increase students’ use of this technology by adding interactive web-based lessons with daily instruction.  Teachers can use the student response system to assess students’ comprehension through quizzes of daily lessons.  Teachers can also create teams for assessment challenges.

All teachers at my school can use the Student Response System as educational tools to gather real-time feedback from students in the classroom.  This wireless device system will engage teachers and students in classroom lessons.  Clickers allows students to respond to questions quickly and interactively.  The teacher poses questions to students who then use the clicker to respond to the correct answer.

There are many advantages to student response systems such as engaging students with lessons, documenting attendance and progress, monitor the progress of students, improve critical thinking skills and increase student achievement and knowledge retention.  The student response system is a great resource for media feedback for teachers and students.  The system also gives students surveys and shows the results immediately.

I will use various strategies to enhance learning in my classroom with the student response system.  Prior to doing a lesson, I can prepare questions for students.  Having classroom discussions and debates among students will help me adjust the instruction for a better understanding of the concepts.  Another strategy I will employ is to do group assignments with peer assessments for feedback from students.  I will also gauge students’ difficulties by asking questions and checking for understanding of each lesson.  Using feedback after sharing students’ answers with the class will give students an opportunity rethink answers and I adjust to my instruction.            

I will be able to incorporate this technology as a learning aid into my classroom while reducing paperwork and labor.  Students will have a better understanding of concepts.  Differentiated instruction is made easier for me as I have many students who work at their own pace.  

Student Response System can easily assess student achievement.  The system can use assessment as a teaching tool while delivering content in the classroom.  It can also be used for differentiated instruction and preparing for standardized tests.  The system provides immediate formative and summative feedback in the classroom.  Learning is amplified and test scores increased with the use of the system. 

Assessing student achievement is very important to me.  Using the clickers in my classroom will give me the ability to assess students in real-time and have the instant access of how to improve their highest potential.   By obtaining students’ performance results immediately from assessments, my school and the district can track progress throughout the entire school year with the data obtained from the student response systems.  Overall,  student response systems captures assessment data in real-time to determine student comprehension allowing teachers to immediately identify student learning needs and modify the lesson as needed.  This system will be a great educational tool to use for all teachers.

Teachers can obtain further information from the below web sites and videos to inquire or purchase Clickers:
Turning Technologies
Smartroom Learning Solutions
Renaissance Learning

VIDEOS ON CLICKERS 

“Clickers” : Student Response System

Using Clickers in the Classroom

Turning Technologies: Student Response Systems