Let us begin by explaining what an Audience Response System is :

An Audience Response System (ARS) allows large groups of people to vote on a topic or answer a question with the use of only one PC or laptop. Each person has a response pad (also known as  clickers, digivote, digivoters, pads, keepads, optivote, optivoters to name a few) with which selections can be made. Each remote communicates with a computer via receiver that is usually plugged into the computer via a USB port.  After a set time – or when all participants have answered – the system ends the polling for that particular question and tabulates the results instantly. Typically, the results are instantly made available to the participants via a pie graph or bar chart, displayed on the projector.

In situations where tracking is required, a response pad can be allocated to a students name via each pads unique Identification number (UID) . In this way the answer of each individual can later be identified. One can just imagine how much time this would save the teacher or trainer with marking!

In addition to the presenters computer and projector, the typical audience response system has the following components:

• base station (receiver)- nowadays as small as memory stick!
• wireless keypads (one for each participant)
• audience response system software

Over the last 6 years I have used many different types of Audience Response Systems and have come to settle on one brand called OPTIVOTE.  It was born in the USA but then thankfully for us South Africans migrated over to the UK.  Our South African education syllabus is more aligned with the British making it much easier to integrate with and into ours. I also found communication about our software needs for SA schools was better understood and quickly modified to suit our needs with Optivote than with many other brands. For example: Optivote has a function that allows the teacher to link certain questions to “standards” or “learning outcomes” to ascertain whether a student has achieved their learning outcome at the end of the lesson- INSTANTLY- with NO MARKING!

I really feel that this could be the answer for teachers who have very large classes and are under tremendous work pressure to mark over 50 students test with say 30 questions equalling 1500 questions!

So….. I don’t quite get it.. How does the whole thing work in a nutshell and what are the REAL  BENEFITS for a Teachers and Students?

HOW IT WORKS:

1. The teacher creates a lesson and gives it a name.

2. In that lesson the teacher can create a multiple choice question(s) and can choose to give one of the options or answers a correct value if the question is a subjective one- ie: B is the correct answer and A, C and D are wrong if we had 4 options. If the question was about how a student felt, like : “Do you look forward to coming to school?”  and the answers were : A : YES or B : NO then there is no right or wrong answer and that would be a an objective question.

3. He or she can then choose a class list where the students name correspond to an Optivote Response Pad by number ( John is Response Pad1 and Suzie is Responsed Pad2 etc etc) or just hand out the remotes randomly.

4. The teacher can now “Engage” the class by “going live” with the voting session and we can see after say ten seconds allowing  the students to “vote” what percentage of the students answered what right or wrong or just the distribution.

View of who has and still has to vote: Blue indciating voted

5. The teacher can then automatically see what the WHOLE class thought was the correct answer and then show (or the programme can indicate it for you) the students if they got it right.

The results of the entire classes effort

6. The teacher can now repeat this lesson on different classes or send this lesson via the Internet to other teachers in return for one of their lessons thereby saving THOUSANDS of hours creating lessons! Surely the future of learning lies in SHARING CONTENT??

One can see how this can be of BENIFIT to the STUDENT in so many wonderfull ways:

- Even the shy usually quite kids can “participate” and “contribute” in the classroom along with everyone else WITHOUT the fear of being thought of as “stupid or “dumb” if they got the answer wrong by putting up their hand and answering

- It forces the student to be “interactive” and think about the question and then to “engage” in it by pressing button on their remote thereby greatly reducing the amount of further study time later on. What a bonus!!

- It is fun to see the whole groups answer distribution INSTANTLY on the screen as it lightens the mood in the class

- It’s something different and unique and everyone thinks it’s cool

Enough for now, gotta dash – My first blog EVER!! Pls forgive any spelling or grammatical errors. I will fix up soon!! LOTS MORE TO COME