Personal Response Systems and Lizzie
Lizzie makes the news in such unexpected ways!
Personal response systems are like televsion remote clickers, and are used by teachers and others to assess learning and opinions in real time. The technology has been around for more than ten years, but instructors are now using it in the classroom to determine whether their students have understood a lesson and adjusting their teaching accordingly.
I am a teacher and our college has this technology. I haven’t used it in the classroom yet, but plan on implementing it soon. One of the added benefits to the PSS is that students enjoy using the devices and seeing their responses appear before them in real time. I guess you could say this replaces the “show of hands” response to queries. Anything that can engage students in the learning process, whether it be the PSS or other creative uses of technologies, is a good thing.
And how does Lizzie Borden fit into this 21st century computer system? Well, read this excerpt from The Journal, 23 May 2007:
In the Kent State project, Debi Bolls, an eighth-grade English instructor also from Roberts Middle School, had her class deconstruct the famous late-19th-century case surrounding the double ax-murder of Borden’s father and stepmother. “[It’s] an exercise that I started a couple of years ago, when the students were reading a play on the trial,” Bolls says. “I thought it would be fun to discuss. I wanted the students to learn to read for details, and I tell them they are all lawyers, and lawyers have to support everything they say.
“This year with the response systems, we asked the students to take the information we had and tear it apart and find, based on that evidence, whether to go to trial. The students were split into two groups and had to argue why or why not, and vote using the response systems. We posted what we called ‘Points to Ponder,’ which are the debated issues, and the kids had to vote on who won that section of the debate.”
Bolls believes the clickers help draw students out, providing a kind of shelter from open verbal sparring, which can cause some kids to clam up. “A lot of students are afraid to express their opinions, but because [the systems are] anonymous, the only person who knows what the students answer is me. It encourages everyone to participate, and once they realize others have the same opinion, it gives them the opportunity to speak up.” She says the clickers allow students “to become an active part of the experience.”
Charlene O’Hanlon, “Press ‘2’ for ‘Not Guilty’,” T.H.E. Journal, 5/1/2007, http://www.thejournal.com/articles/20621
