After reading, "Clickers in the Classroom: An Interactive Learning Approach" and "7 Things You should Know About Clickers," I looked at the years the both articles were published. One was published in 2005 and one in 2007. Both articles spoke about promoting clickers in the higher education classroom.
I know today that there are cell phone applications that high school students can download that have a very similar outcome. The teacher poses a multiple choice question on the board and the students can respond anonymously to the question using their cellphone. We have taken this technology to a new and better level. However, in a first grade classroom most students do not have cell phones and they are just beginning to learn how to read and write as well as participate in classroom discussions and lessons. I have a Promethean Board in my classroom and would like students to be able to participate in classroom discussions using a clicker approach. I have heard of ActiVotes by Promethean and am wondering if this is the best approach to take with my students.
Here are the potential benefits that I learned from reading the articles and applying to my own classroom. Students in first grade are sometimes afraid to raise their hands and also get distracted by other activities going on within the classroom. A clicker approach would guide them to participation and would also keep them accountable and more engaged in the learning environment. It would also allow me to see how much of my class understood a concept and can move on from it or not. My question is: Are ActiVotes the best resource for this approach in an elementary classroom?
I have seen the activotes in action and I think if you are already using Promethean they are nice. I have also used Turning Point student response systems, which are also good. In addition to the phone apps you mentioned, a lot of sites allow for input from a device, such as a computer or laptop. A site like Socrative does that or Kahoot. Take a look at Kahoot and see if that would work for you when you take the little ones to the lab.
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