Plickers - The EASY alternative to Clickers

Last week I came across a blog post over at Who's Who and Who's News, about Plickers, an iPad app that gives you the immediate results we love with clickers, (or student response system), without all the front-end planning. I was so excited after doing some research, that I could not wait to try it out, which I did  before the week was over, and it worked great. One of the things I like best about Plickers is that only the teacher needs a device, the app is available for andriod phones or the iphone (the iOS app also works on the iPad.) The plickers are actually a type of barcode that you print out for each student at the Plickers website. At the site you create a class and assign a numbered Plicker to each student, each side of the figure is labeled with A, B,C, or D.  There are 40 unique plickers, and you can reuse the same sheets with multiple classes, because you will assign them to students in each class separately.

This is a plicker

When you open the app you chose your class and add questions and the correct answer. This is what I found easiest, since students are not answering questions within the app, you do not have to add the whole question, you could just put the number or maybe the objective that it addresses. You can provide students with the multiple choice questions in the same way you normally would, on paper, as a PowerPoint, or even projecting them using a document camera. Students will answer by holding up their Plicker with the correct answer choice on top of the figure. Then you simply scan the room as if you were taking a video with your Smartphone or iPad, Plickers will record each student's answer and show you a graph of how many gave the right (and wrong) answers.

This is what you see on your device

 It also provides you with exactly how many answers are recorded and which students, so you can quickly catch any you might have missed on the first scan. When I demonstrated it in a 4th grade class, it took only 2-3 questions before we were able to record most of the students' answers on the first pass. The teacher loved being able to quickly assess who understood the concepts so she could move on and which ones she would need to go back and review again. You can see the results in the app or at the website on your computer. The video below shows you how you would scan and the device will record the answers.

As the school year is quickly coming to an end and many of you are preparing students for end of year tests, this is a quick and fun way to see what students know without having to pull out the red pen and check all those practice tests. You and your students will get immediate feedback with little hassle. I know at this point in the year it is hard to get excited about adding one more thing to your bag of tricks, but I really think Plickers is worth checking out.