Plickers

Another cool app that I have used in the classroom is called Plickers. Plickers is a made up word that stands for the words, "Paper Clickers". We've all used the clickers with either our Smart Boards or Activ Boards, which are awesome. These clickers are free on the website https://plickers.com.

See photos below of students using the paper clickers.

As I stated earlier, the paper clickers are free, as is a teacher account. There may be a time later on that there will be a premium account that can be subscribed to for a fee, but the creators want to keep as much free as possible. To use, you just log into your account and print off a set of the cards on light colored card stock. I usually buy a pack of 50 pages of white at Walmart for about $3.50. As you can see in the photo above, each card looks sort of like some bar code or QR code of some kind, which is exactly what they are. Each card is slightly different, and they are all numbered. 

Once you print out your cards, you will want to set up your class, assigning a different number to each student name. Then when you want to use the cards, you pass out the card with the same number to that student.

So if you have a student named John Doe and you added him as number 1 on your account, you would always give him the card with the number 1 on it. Here is a picture of what a Plicker card looks like: 

To use the cards, you would first log into your account and create some questions. For each question, you will have A, B, C, or D as a correct answer, which you would plug in as you are creating an assessment. Then when you are ready, you pass out the cards to your students and log into your Plickers account and go to "Live View". On the screen on your Smart Board, the students will see a screen with the question you click on while using your tablet or your phone, whichever device you have downloaded the app onto. They then decide which answer they think is correct and then hold up their card with the corresponding letter facing up towards the ceiling. Then the teacher clicks on the scan button on the device and scans each card, which works remarkably well. As each card is scanned, you can see immediately who is correct and who is not and the name is tied to each student. The results are saved and can be downloaded in a report. We are getting ready for standardized testing and have been doing some math tests and wanted to know which questions were giving our students trouble, so we didn't even type the questions in. We just typed in Question 1 and chose the correct answer and plugged in the rest. The students had already taken the math test on a bubble sheet, so they had their answers ready. We started up the screen and came to question 1, and had the students look at their bubble sheet and hold up the answer that they chose. It took a little while, but now I have data that I can use as I am re-mediating students on skills they have difficulty with.

Plickers are also great for classrooms where there are not enough tablets or iPods for students to use. My daughter's boyfriend works in a school where they have limited technology, so I can see this as being a very valuable tool for him to use.

Plickers is nice in ways that are different from other sites, like Kahoot and Quizlet. You have complete control over the time, so there does not need to be a time limit on questions. This would work well for a math assessment. Group work can be done as well with Plickers. It is a nice way to do an assessment quickly!