The Right Answer...Just a Click Away!

When coming up with concepts for this blog, I began to think of ways technology is or could be applied in an agricultural education classroom at the high school level. However, all I could really think about were the "clickers" we used in Mr. Foster's class today.

During his presentation on the history of SAE's, Mr. Foster designed slides that would ask a multiple choice question to the class. Rather than have students raise their hands or write down their answer on a sheet of paper, or any process that might normally accompany such an activity, he handed each one of us a remote control clicker. That clicker had buttons with letters and numbers (example: 1/a, 2/b,...) the corresponded with his answers. We were then able to "buzz" our answer's in and a little counter at the top of the slide allowed him to see when all 18 of us had responded.

I was just taken back by this concept! I remember seeing it first presented three years ago in my freshman survey class, but I haven't seen it used since then, and it was great to be reminded of how useful it really is as an educational tool.

Imagain if Ag Ed classrooms across the state of Ohio were equipped with a set of clickers and an Ag Teacher with the desire to use them! Students could answer questions honestly, without the fear of being wrong, and not only the fear of just being wrong, but of being wrong infront of their peers!

Right now, tools like this are probably not feasable within a high school agricultural classroom, but as advancements in technology continue to increase and the cost of advancements continue to decrease, who knows! Maybe in 10 years, we will see high school agricultural educations implementing this tool as part of their instruction!

For more information on clickers required in some classrooms, please visit: http://www.uaf.edu/sunstar/archives/20061010/clicker.html

--Hilary Bailey