'Clickers' let teachers see who's really learning a lesson

Hand-held electronic devices for children may catch a lot of flak. But the little plastic keypad that Jill Hanford's sixth-graders use is revolutionizing the way she teaches her classes.

Hanford swears by the "clicker," a device that looks like a remote control but functions as a silent link between Hanford and her students. The clicker lets students answer Hanford's questions simultaneously and allows her to see what proportion of the class understood the concept.

The device keeps the whole class engaged. And "it's fun," said sixth-grader Sydney Dominguez, a student in Hanford's math class at Amity Elementary School in West Boise. "Also, it's way easier than having to raise your hand, and you don't have to share your answer with the whole class, so you won't get embarrassed."

HOW CLICKERS WORK

Hanford stands at the front of the room and explains the math lesson. She displays a problem on the projector screen at the front of her class, which is linked to her computer. Then Hanford asks students to answer the problem.

At this point in a traditional classroom, students would raise their hands. A few who knew the answer would keep their hands down out of shyness, and a couple of others might answer aloud.

In Hanford's classroom, silence reigns as everyone works out the problem and enters the answer on the clicker. Boxes at the bottom of the projector screen light up, indicating that there are answers, but not who entered them. That way, nobody knows how long it takes a particular student to do the problem.

Privacy is a huge selling point for the clickers, which are growing in popularity at Treasure Valley schools. Hanford can tell what proportion of the class got the multiple-choice answer right, and even how many chose the other options. She can use the information sent in by the clickers to assess how many people learned the lesson far more quickly than she could if she were grading papers. Only Hanford knows the identity of the students who sent in right answers or wrong ones.

CLICKERS IN THE VALLEY

Clickers are part of a package officially called a Classroom Performance System. Any teacher with a computer and projector can use them. In southwestern Idaho, many elementary school teachers refer to two main suppliers of the devices: an Indiana company called CIM Audio Visual, and the Houston-based Data Projections.

The devices can be found in classrooms from elementary schools to graduate schools around the country. Corporations use them, too, for assessing what workers are gaining from their training, said Heather Halpin, a sales representative for Data Projections.

Schools pay between $1,700 and $2,700 for a 32-student system from CIM Audio Visual or Data Projections. Several teachers received grants from the Boise Public Schools Education Foundation for their systems this year.

Amy Jones, a sales rep for CIM Audio Visual, estimates there are 450 of her company's classroom systems in Idaho, about one-third of them in the Treasure Valley and most of those in the Boise School District. Halpin said she has sold about 10 sets of the clickers in the Treasure Valley. Clickers also are used at Boise State University.

Hanford heard about the clickers through a University of Idaho program that showcased education technology.

"The students I had with me were like, 'These are the coolest things,' and they just loved them right away," said Hanford, who was the first to use clickers at Amity Elementary four years ago. "They saw that everybody had a chance to participate, instead of that fast hand."

WHAT TEACHERS, STUDENTS THINK

Clickers save teachers time, said Amy Pinkerman, a fifth-grade teacher at Mountain View Elementary who won a grant from the Boise Schools Foundation this year to purchase a system that uses clickers. She has been using the clickers for four years.

"I can spend an hour with (the students) versus an hour of grading," Pinkerman said. "With all the testing, this is a great tool for us."

It's also a boon for kids who don't have good handwriting.

"There are some kids who are extremely bright and have poor handwriting skills for some reason," Pinkerman said. "It puts everybody on a level playing field."

The clickers take a day or two to get used to, said Peyton Jones, a sixth-grader at Amity. Jones said he's sometimes shy about raising his hand, but the thing he likes best about using the clickers is that they show him how well the rest of the class did. He doesn't like feeling singled out.

Using a clicker instead of raising your hand, "You don't feel like you're the only one who knows it," said Jones.

Anne Wallace Allen: 377-6433