Part A- Description of Need or Opportunity

As part of CEP 812, I am solving a problem in my classroom using technology. In this post you will see the outline of my problem and the way in which I plan on fixing this problem. Enjoy!

PART A: The Wicked Problem - A Need or an Opportunity

1. What is the important educational need that you are seeking to address? This element is fundamental in this project. Since we have limited time, energy, and resources, cool technology without a clear sense of why it matters or what we gain by it is of little value in the educational setting.

Assessment is a major function of all classrooms and my classroom is no different. The curriculum in my school is intense and asks students to have a huge set of content knowledge. Not only must students know the content, but they must have skills that allow them to showcase their knowledge and use it to solve multiple types of problems. Throughout my classes I constantly assess my student’s understanding of the material being presented. This formative assessment is mostly done orally, but is sometimes done using pen and paper. When completing the assessments by word of mouth I am able to instantaneously alter my instruction. If I notice that I have failed to clarify a certain point I will change the course of the lesson. The problem, however, is that I only receive information from a small sample of my students. When using pen and paper, the feedback is not instantaneous, and I fail to alter my lesson within the desired timeframe. In order to provide better instruction that is moldable to my students needs, I need to find a technology that will allow me to poll results from all of my students instantaneously.

2. How you plan to address this educational issue with technology?  You need to make a clear and convincing case that your proposed solution will make a real impact on the issue you identify, and that your proposed approach is a reasonable approach given its costs and possible alternatives.

I plan to address this issue with the use of CPS clickers. The clickers themselves integrate well with the SmartBoard that is installed in my room. I will use the clickers to assess students understanding throughout lessons. I will give students clickers at the beginning of each lesson and will have them answer questions throughout. I will also be able to quickly add a quesiton at any point if I feel that it needs to be addressed. Depending on the results, I will change my instruction in a manner that will key in on topics that students are struggling with. I believe that this will be an effective strategy that will give my students more chances to take in my content. If I notice that a certain topic is not understood, I can alter my instruction to better teach the material. This differentiation will hopefully help me reach a broader range of students.

3. Logistics of solution: For example…

1. What is the scope? (e.g., when and where will tool be used and for how long? Who all will use it?)

I will use this approach with one of my 9th grade World Studies classes. I teach two sections of this course and one class will use the clickers, while the other will not. The class that does not will be my control. The classes meet every other day in a block schedule and the assessment will run for five total days.

4. Relevant research and resources (from the Internet and elsewhere) including reports on the closest effort you can find to what you are planning to do as well as ideas and materials you may be able to build upon in your own effort.  Your description should include:

1. The results of your search (What resources may help guide your project? What resources may help in the implementation of your project?)
2. What you learned from performing this search. For example, which search engines did you use? What strategies did you use? What helped or hindered your search? How would you search again next time?

A- I found many resources that will be helpful for my project. They are linked here: Smart Exchange- http://exchange.smarttech.com/#tab=0 This resource provides SMART templates and lesson ideas for teachers. The clicker system is integrated with my SmartBoard and the lessons (and quizzes) that are used here will be helpful in my teaching. Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (UofM)- http://teachingwclicker.wiki.usfca.edu/file/view/teaching+with+clickers.pdf This PDF is from U of M and highlights the benefits of teaching with clickers in the college classroom. Many of the same ideals that are touched upon in this writing can be adapted to my classroom. There is a section on best practices that I found to be quite good. There is also a great section with suggestions on how to implement the use of clickers in your own classroom. Classroom Teacher Blog- http://blog.classroomteacher.ca/617/using-clickers-in-the-classroom/ This blog provides good teaching ideas from an actual teacher. It is basic, but gives ideas of how to use the clickers in the classroom. B- I learned that clickers are widely used by a great deal of teachers in numerous fields. From elementary schools to college classrooms, clickers can be used for formative and summative assessment. Professors in college classrooms and elementary settings all use response systems to help judge student understanding. I used Google and Google Scholar to help me find resources. I wanted to find resources from teachers and from academics in the field. Both of these resources helped me to do so. There are a great deal of places on the internet that provide useful tools for clickers. If I were to search again, I would change the search terms that I used. Instead of searching, “clickers classroom uses,” I may search, “clickers blogs classroom.” Searches like this would return websites that are geared directly towards teachers. Many of the resources that were initially produced were for clicker companies (like CPS).

5. A plan for the portion you will implement during this course and the portion you will implement after this course completes.

During- I plan to implement the pre and post-test during the course. I will teach five lessons that use the CPS clickers and will assess their effectiveness with the two assessments. The class using clickers will be assessed the one that did not use clickers. After- I plan to analyze the data and continue using the clickers if they prove to be effective. I will attempt to use a greater variety of question types (instead of just the true/false and multiple choice).

6. How would you know you were successful?

I will know that I was successful if students perform well on the post-test for this portion of my course. Prior to implementation there will be a pre-test that is given to both classes. This baseline data will help me discern whether or not the growth that I see is due to the use of the clickers or because of a difference in the classes themselves. At the end of this project I will chart the average assessment score from each class and note the growth of each class. If student growth is greater in the class with clickers I will know that I was successful.