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Hey, I found this video that tell us on plicker usage. It's about Borman's Abby Pomroy uses Plickers to increase engagement with her students. Only one device is necessary to use this technology tool with the entire class. Students each have their own cards that, when turned in a particular direction, correspond to answers to multiple choice questions. Ms. Pomroy can then analze the data with her students in real time and address gaps. This is formative assessment at its finest!

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Borman's Abby Pomroy uses Plickers to increase engagement with her students. Only one device is necessary to use this technology tool with the entire class. Students each have their own cards that, when turned in a particular direction, correspond to answers to multiple choice questions.

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Anyway do you know how does plicker actually works? Check out this video for the tutorial!

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Plickers Tutorial: Formative Assessment Tool

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That's true right! Youngsters these days are so lucky because they have many educational interactive such as plicker itself. And as you said, the good side is they're easy and fun to use but the bad sides are they are being spoiled with technologies as they will learn a bit slower. Other than that, the other bad sides of plicker are they will depend on the technology in term of education rather than having the traditional way when they want learn something. I could't imagine the next generation that will change drastically compared to the older generation! But however, I do love the way plicker works to the learner these day as have so many advantages. I guess we have to see the outcome!

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I agree with Asya because nowadays youngster are more to technology and this method might attract them to study. Not only that, parents also can use Plicker as a tools to teach their children and they don't have to worried about if their children plays with markers or pencil because that stationary might harm them if they do not know how to use it. Plickers is like a puzzle and it will stimulate our brain on how we going fit the missing piece on the puzzle. So my suggestion is parents can use Plicker as an early education for their children. They don't have to wait until their children grow up for them them to learn it in the future.                    Ismay.C. (2016, March 22).

Plickers: An excellent alternative to clickers. Retrieved from http://blogs.reed.edu/ed-tech/2016/03/plickers-an-excellent-alternative-to-clickers/

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There has been much coverage in education and instructional technology circles about the use of clickers in the classroom. Clickers can be an excellent way to look for student understanding of lecture material or outside the classroom reading/flipped content during class. Eric Mazur, a physicist at Harvard University, is thought by many to be the pioneer of using "just-in-time-teaching" (another name for these classroom response systems and the instruction that goes with them) in science classrooms and has spoken and wrote much about the benefits of this style of teaching. But these clickers come with some downsides as well that I will address in this blog post. Additionally, I will discuss a new, cost-effective, superb alternative to clickers called Plickers (paper clickers).

Clickers and other classroom response systems used to assess student learning can be seen in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education classrooms today. They are particularly popular in large classrooms where it might be more difficult to engage with many students at once. Probably one of their biggest benefits, as Mazur has written about extensively, are their power to get students to think about and solve problems on the fly in the classroom. Students are provided with near immediate feedback and are also able to discuss their problem solving strategies with other students and with the professor. Instead of passively sitting back through a lecture or feverishly trying to copy everything down from the chalkboard without really thinking, solving problems on the fly in class provides avenues for student learning to happen while being in a comfortable environment.

Another plus with classroom response systems is the multiple choice options that students are provided with as the potential correct answers to problems. This allows for students to deduce what incorrect answers are and why they are incorrect and also to further enforce why they made the choice that they did or why an answer is the correct choice. Free response-type systems also exist, but multiple choice is often a little easier to assess. Teachers do need to think carefully about what alternative answers could be for problems and this experience often comes through much trial and error and noting what misunderstandings and misconceptions students may have.

The anonymity of the clicker is also valuable for students. They push which option they believe is correct and then the instructor can look at the responses in aggregate to determine whether more discussion should occur among members of the class on that problem, whether it is time to discuss the options as a class, or whether it is time to move on to the next problem or part of class. Students can be given the opportunity to change their mind about their response after voting has concluded and a re-vote is administered or to explain their response to other students in the class. These teaching opportunities further build student learning of content.

This all sounds great. And if schools have the resources (or request their students buy physical clickers or a clicker app), it can be relatively straight-forward to get set up with clickers in a classroom and reap the benefits explained above. Unfortunately, physical clickers can malfunction or not work in the classroom which can be a pain for instructional technologists, teachers, and students. If the remote sensor that clickers communicate with is not in the right spot, it can be difficult for some students to log their answers. Additionally, if the clicker app option is used, schools need to ensure that WiFi access is solid in all classrooms that plan to use classroom voting, since student responses will be sent over the Internet.

There are free alternatives available as well such as PollEverywhere.com, but, again, these alternatives require an Internet connection or cellphone coverage. What if there was a way to get all the benefits of clickers (anonymity, recording of student results, peer instruction, ease of setup, etc.) in addition to very little technology and the potential errors that come with that? It would seem that something of this sort might cost a lot of money or wouldn't be feasible.

That's where Plickers comes in! More information is available at Plickers.com and a brief description from the website follows:

Plickers is a powerfully simple tool that lets teachers collect real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices.

The power of Plickers is really in their simplicity. Students hold up a piece of paper with their response (A, B, C, or D) to a multiple choice question. The instructor then opens the free Plickers app and scans the room for responses. As the instructor scans the room, the app automatically detects student responses and the instructor is able to look immediate at the distribution of responses and how each student has voted.

So how does that work? It sounds like magic. The first time one does this it really does feel like magic and the students are amazed and almost creeped out by it the first couple times. The Plickers really are just pieces of paper, but with a very specific design for each student/plicker. They are currently available in sets of 40 or 63 and are completely free to print off from the website. (Printing off 63 cards on card stock costs between $5 and $10. An incredibly inexpensive alternative to student devices/apps!)

You can easily go into Plickers.com, set up an account, and create a new class. You then upload a class roster and it will automatically assign cards with a designated number to each student. Students then either keep their card throughout the term or they can pick them up at the beginning of each class. Instructors can also create questions on Plickers.com and display those questions with the multiple choice/true-or-false options. After scanning the class, the instructor can show the students whether their response was recorded (but not necessarily what their response actually was) and also a distribution of the student responses. This is updated in real-time through an Internet connection from the smart device that scans the classroom papers and reads the responses and the projecting computer.

You may be asking, "But I thought you said I don't need Internet?" You can also just have a multiple choice question in your slides or on the board or even on the fly just ask a question verbally. Then you have your students put up their response on the plicker and you scan with the app across the class. The distribution of responses will be shown on the app and the instructor is able to decide in that moment how they'd like to proceed. All that is needed is printed out pieces of paper that the students hold up and a smart device to scan the room that the instructor will use.

As a full-time instructional technologist at Reed, I'm always looking for new, advantageous ways to bring technology into the classroom. Usually that involves helping students and faculty learn how to use R and R Markdown to create reproducible analyses and beautiful visualizations and output. This semester I am also teaching a section of MATH 141 - Introduction to Probability and Statistics and my students have had the chance to use Plickers quite a bit. The multiple choice questions provide a nice break from lecture for the students and for me and also a great way to look to see if there is content that students aren't understanding or if students are understanding it. It's great to have a tool to get immediate feedback that only takes a few seconds to scan the entire classroom.

I've also used the Plickers to survey the class on opinions and really any context where multiple choices are given as options provides a great opportunity to use Plickers. They are by far the simplest classroom voting technology I have worked with, the students really like them, and they really reduce or eliminate so many of the issues that physical clickers/clicker apps have. I can't recommend them enough.

I will close with a picture of my MATH 141 students from this semester just beginning to answer a really challenging multiple choice question. If you are interested in using Plickers in your classroom, please email me at cismay@reed.edu and I'd be happy to show you how simple they are to use and to be there for you to assist in trying them out in the classroom.

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Plickers: An excellent alternative to clickers

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There has been much coverage in education and instructional technology circles about the use of clickers in the classroom. Clickers can be an excellent way to look for student understanding of lecture material or outside the classroom reading/flipped content during class. ... finish reading Plickers: An excellent alternative to clickers

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But, there are positive review from students that use Plickers like they think that Plickers is a great way to do test because it is more easy and private thus it can avoid cheating on test and you don't need pencil to answer it. Also other student said that it is fun to use Plickers and nobody knews your answer except the teacher and also it is save time due to we only to raise the card, not jolt down the answer. Not only that, it feels like you are playing a puzzle and all you need is a piece that will complete the puzzle.                                                                Learning Wholeheartedly retrieved from https://learningwholeheartedly.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/what-you-need-to-know-about-plickers/

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As teachers we all know how important it is to take the temperature of the room. To figure out if our students are following along and understanding the lesson. But, sometimes that can be difficult - we can do a "thumbs up, thumbs down" or "vote with your feet/toes" or even an every student response...

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I suggest to all college and school to use this type of technology because it is also free technology. We can see that a lot of positive feedback from previous users. Its have many advantages and also disadvantages. Even though there are disadvantages, the teachers and students can manage it by their own way as if there's a will, there's a way. The plicker also can attract students to come to class because nowadays students are more relay to technology and everyone prefer to use the easier way to learn. I think this is one of the best ways for the teachers and students to be more successful in future. Here I attach a picture of Plickers.                                                                                                                                  Trautz., C. (2014, April 10).  PD on Plickers. Retrieved from http://mathtechyblog.blogspot.my/2014/04/pd-on-plickers.html

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Other disadvantages of using Plicker is sometimes if student loses their Plicker card, they cannot participate equally in the activity using Plickers. Not only that, even if they get mixed up their card with other student, teachers might be recording answers from one student under the different name! Even technology have its own pros and cons.                                                                                                                                                                        Exploring Plickers. Retrieved from        https://davidhfournier2.wordpress.com/pros-and-cons/

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In this post, I will discuss the advantages and possible drawbacks of incorporating the Plickers technology into one's lessons, and I suggest ways to mitigate the latter to some extent. I end the post by considering where Plickers would fit in the SAMR model.

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Yes. The students need to be on time during Plicker activity. If not, they will miss out the activity and they cannot gain new knowledge from the Plickers activity, also they will miss the precious moment with their friend and teacher. Before we go further, do you know who is the founder of Plickers? He is Nolan Amy. He joined Teach for America in 2008 and developed the first version of Plickers while a high school math teacher in Richmond, CA. He also has assistants behind him to make this Plickers more success and can be used by everyone. To know more about Plickers? You can visit their official website. Here is the link.                                                                                                                                                                            Plickers. Retrieved from https://www.plickers.com/about

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But of course there is consequences of using this method which is if a student shows up late during a Plickers activity, there does not appear to be a way to return to completed questions (if desired), since the questions disappear out of the queue. This is especially problematic if Plickers is used for quizzing and the teacher wishes to give a make-up quiz for absentees. Having to reload questions into the Plickers queue every time a student needs to make-up or re-do a quiz isn’t efficient.

Currently, there is no way to make a paper version of a set of questions from the Plickers site, which could be a quick (albeit not ideal) way to alleviate this problem when using Plickers for quiz-style assessments.
"Due to the fact that data on individual students were not collected it was unclear whether the intervention was effective for all students" (Sutherland et al., 2003).  Darling-Hammond, L. (2003). Keeping good teachers. Educational Leadership, 60(8), 6– 77. Retrieved from https://aquila.usm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1347&context=masters_theses

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Some of the advantages with this Plickers is teachers are able to give instant feedback to all and any student, since she can see all students answers, correct or incorrect, in real-time. Plickers can thus be used to check students’ understanding of material learned in a previous lesson or just learned in the current lesson. When performing the latter, the teacher is able to tailor the lesson to her particular class. If the class is struggling with a concept in her lesson, she will be able to see right away, using Plickers questions as a formative assessment, and decide to re-explain or focus more time on those aspects of the lesson that have proven difficult for the students. Likewise, a teacher can speed up a lesson if the students seem to be mastering the material faster than expected. https://davidhfournier2.wordpress.com/pros-and-cons/

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Here are what you can do with Plicker

Plickers is a valuable tool for real-time formative assessment. It acts as valuable polling tool, by just providing every student a card and using smartphone to scan it. Educators in real-time can check the responses.

Quizzes and questions are multiple-choice and text-only. Educators can add valuable questions and options for answers to provoke and check analysis inquiry.

In order to conduct poll, educators can create poll and project it on-screen, students can pick-up their custom responses cards, turning the cards in various orientations to show their answer. Educator holds up device and can scan student answers. Replies can automatically project on the screen and educators can tack their student’s replies.
P. Bharti, (2015). Ed Tech Review. Retrieve from,  http://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/insights/1755-real-time-formative-assessment-without-the-need-for-student-devices

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I agree with you, plicker is one kind of teaching method that use technology advanced. I think this should be applied in every school or even for college. Student will think that it is fun when you know don't need to bring any of workbook just to do some exercise. With plicker, they just need a 'paper clicker' to answer question and the teacher can only use their mobile or tablet to scan it. I wish that my teacher use this method back in my time in school. - Atirah                         Plickers retrieved from https://www.plickers.com/

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In my understanding, with the Plickers, there's only the teacher need the device and the students just need to have some special card that has been provided and can join the activities provided in class. For example, a different student has different QR Code card given, so when the teacher makes a quiz, the teacher just need to scan the code of the card to know the answer that has given by the students. Fo your information, according to Wikipedia, QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response Code) is the trademark for a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) first designed for the automotive industry in Japan.   Interesting isn't? What do you think?                                                                                  QR Code. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code

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Hey everyone! Yes, I agree with you. Plickers is helpful towards the teacher and also the students. For me, it helps students and teachers save a lot of time instead of the students need to access the web which is they need to have data and take time to open it just to do some activities with their teacher. It might seem like the old fashion of technology that use only the paper and one device, but it is actually high technology that can help the learning easy because inside of the paper, there is QR code with different answer. I think Plicker is the best tool for the students and teachers to use it. Here is the video that teacher uses Plickers in the classrooms with the students. Enjoy it!                                                                                                                                   Zurawski., J. (2014, November 9). Plickers In The Classroom. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMAX2EQnUXE

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Thank you for the padlet... make sure each of the comment must be interactive and comprehensive. Keep going update your post regarding the topic that discuss.

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Yes, i do agree with you! I did some research regarding plicker and most of the teachers around the world uses that method of teaching at their class in order to make the learning procress more interesting and exciting. Their responses were positive overall and it shows that both teachers and students do enjoy with the use of plicker. Even myself felt curious with flicker because it look fun! By the way what is the way to use them?

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Hey guys! Today we are going to talk about Plickers. So, Plickers is a powerfully simple tool that let teachers collect real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices. What do you think about Plickers? Is it helpful?