Clickers

I am back to the routine today after spending two days in Philadelphia (Temple University!!) learning how to use "clickers" (okay, classroom response systems) in teaching. I had experimented with these briefly, but when contemplating how to use them I had only imagined the tip of the iceberg. Yesterday's Turning Technologies conference breakout sessions gave me new ideas on what kinds of questions to ask students, how to use clickers in presentations, and other innovative ways to incorporate clickers to engage listeners and encourage discussion. I think our new set of library clickers will be a popular teaching tool. I transcribed my notes from the various presentations onto cards today so that I'll be able to make a coherent presentation to the librarians. Of course the cards will transform into a Mind Map for presentation! We're even going to have one of the presenters from yesterday visit our group to speak as a knowledgeable user with hopes that his enthusiasm will infect our librarians.

Why is this post in my Mind Mapping blog? Because occasionally I do presentations on Mind Mapping, of course, and clickers would work in that setting, too. In the future, we may be using mobile devices as clickers in online presentations, and this would be a great technology for collecting demographics on users, tutorial usability, along with content assessment information. (This online clicking technology exists and other institutions are using it already. Give us time.)

One of the best parts of this conference was that I won FOUR prizes! The sessions I attended used giveaways as tools for engagement. It's too late for me to incorporate this into Monday's Embedded Ebrarian presentation, but in the future... I'd like to also point out that I snatched my new red Frisbee out of the air with my left (non-dominant) hand. I also have a new red squishy ball, a mug from Fairleigh Dickinson's Education Department, and a bright yellow Turning Technologies T-Shirt that says, "Push my buttons!" And we had live harp music at lunch in Mitten Hall.