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While we moan about privacy issues on Facebook and the rise of sexting, it’s pretty clear that the technology we use these programs on serve a very meaningful purpose in our day to day lives. Have you tried a day without the Internet recently? Ever have your cell die for more than 24 hours? Like it or not, we are a generation that is more than addicted to our gadgets: we are dependant on them.
But all technology was not created equal, and we’re hard-pressed to find a good reason that classroom “clickers” exist, except for lazy professors to feel like they are regaining some sort of control over a classroom that pays more attention to their blackberries than they do their lesson plans. Here’s how it works:
Every student in Mr. White’s class has been assigned a palm-sized, wireless device that looks like a TV remote but has a far less entertaining purpose. With their clickers in hand, the students in Mr. White’s class automatically clock in as “present” as they walk into class.
They then use the numbered buttons on the devices to answer multiple-choice quizzes that count for nearly 20 percent of their grade, and that always begin precisely one minute into class. Later, with a click, they can signal to their teacher without raising a hand that they are confused by the day’s lesson.
Okay, I get this is at Northwestern and you’re dealing with a giant lecture hall full of students, so attendance may be hard to keep track of. But considering how often students manage to lose their personal devices, I can’t begin to imagine the cost to the school (or student), when these things have to be replaced once a week because you forgot it in the quad and don’t want to flunk out of class.
Clickers serve know discernible purpose outside the classroom, though the schools that are using them (Yale and Northwestern, as well as some high schools and middle schools which…come on, you can take attendance in a class of 30 just fine) have said that soon students will be able to use their iPads or phones in the same capacity. At which time these stupid devices will be rendered completely obsolete, and we may actually have to go back to raising our hands during class if we have a question.
am i the only one who thinks clickers are fun? i guess it depends on how the professor use it. in most of my classes, the teacher asks questions and we have to answer them by clicking the right answer. if we click the right answer it gives you points for the class. i think its a pretty good idea.
We had these when I was in undergrad a few years ago at Vanderbilt, for our large lecture classes. Here’s some more reasons they are stupid:
1. At Vandy, not all the classrooms were set up to receive the same signals from the clickers. This meant that you couldn’t just buy one clicker and use it throughout your 4 years in lecture classes – I had to buy two clickers made by different companies just because the classrooms didn’t have a standard system. Each clicker was 30+ dollars. Not cool.
2. One professor used these as a way to take attendance. So groups of friends would get together, decide whose turn it was to go to class that week, and give all their clickers to one person. Then she would bring all the clickers to class, mark everyone as ‘present,’ and leave.
3. In every class that I had to use a clicker, pretty much the entire first class was spent with the professor trying to figure out how the clicker system worked, or trying to explain how it worked to the one or two kids who never figured out how to register their clickers properly. For in-class quizzes, my professors were constantly having to re-set the system and re-do questions because the clickers didn’t always work properly.
Basically, these things were the bane of my existance until I learned to focus on small, discussion-based classes.