Plickers

First thing: What are Plickers?!?!?!
A Plicker is a student specific QR Code that is used to answer multiple choices questions. The teacher controls the question being asked with the app on his/her smart phone, and then scans across the room with the phone to collect student answers.

Plickers.com has pre-made QR Codes that can be printed for free from their website. They come in different sized packages with a minimum of 40 unique cards. Just print out each card, and assign each of your students a number.

From the website you can upload questions and create your classes. To gather students responses though, you do have to download the app onto your smartphone or tablet. For students to answer they have to turn their QR Code a different direction with the answer choice they want facing up.

The "1" on each of the corners means that this is the QR Code for whomever is student #1 in your class, probably Austin Adams. Since the "B" is at the top of the QR Code, Austin is indicating that he thinks the answer to the question is "B". All you have to do now is have the app open on your phone and scan it across the classroom and collect your answers! Answers are saved online and you can look at the reports anytime.

Go to www.plickers.com to create your classes and download your QR Codes

What I like:

• You can create multiple different classes and assign each student their own Plicker number to gather data
• You can upload your own questions and move between which question that you are displaying from the app
• As you are scanning the class, student names will pop up and change to green if they got it right or red if they got the question wrong
• All responses are saved online and reports can be generated to look at later
• When you print out the QR Codes they come two to a page to save on paper (because we all know how quickly schools run out of paper)

How I use it:

In my ideal classroom, I would introduce Plickers on day 1. I would have printed out each code and have it glued to a folder for each student. I would have a few "Getting to Know You" questions made up to demonstrate how to use Plickers. After about a week or so of using Plickers to answer random questions, I would take the folders and fill them with sample questions from whatever standardized test you guys use (for me, it's the STAAR Test). Each day I would have students show their work and practice strategies in their folders, but instead of having to individually grade each folder I would use Plickers to gather responses as an Exit Ticket.