iClickers

iClickers are relatively new to me. I have used them in two of my classes being here at Michigan State. I really liked using them but it had some major disadvantages as far as using them for learning goes in my classes they were used in. My first class was a lecture for an astronomy class and the questions were very hard and so you were just seeing what the majority of people were saying, and not worried about if you understood it or not, you just wanted to be right. They were not participation points, they were graded so you were more concerned about if you were right for your grade instead of why the answer was what it was. So that made a lot of cheating and guessing which did not enrich my learning of that class. In addition, students did not come to class because they would just give the iClicker to their friends and they were rotate just so that someone could click in their answers for them, you did not have to be present in class which does not enrich or help learning at all.
I understand that its good to grade the responses for iClickers because then that gives them incentive to guess right but at the same time, it can make students more concentrated on the grade then the material.
In my second class I used them in, they were used in groups and we could discuss with our group and then we would click in our responses and they were not graded but were instead participation points. This was a lab so showing up for class meant that you would also have to do the lab which had to be turned into the teacher at the end, so skipping class was not really an option. We did use them but not a ton, but I really liked that they could use the responses and then show us to see how the others compared. The step that this teacher took that my other one did not was that they would ask each group what they picked and their reasons for picking it before they would say the right answer so each group really spent time thinking about it instead of guessing, even though it was only for participation points.
I think that if you plan out the best way to use the iClickers, like my second class professor did, then they can be great tools for teaching effectively. As for the grade, I think that most ages can use these because kids are much better at using technology than we were and they continue to get better every year.
-when I was in fifth grade we did a similar thing in a math lesson and we would click in the right answer with little buzzers using a multiple choice question and so I think that upper elementary and so forth would benefit from using these if they are well thought out and organized.