119-The Plickers Class Discussion Extravaganza

James Sturtevant Hacking Engagement

I remember late April of my rookie year as a teacher. I was toast! All my great teaching strategies were worn out. I was scrambling trying to find innovative and engaging ways to present lessons. It was a loooooong 6-weeks till summer vacation.
In early June when I did my post-mortem on the year, I vowed to always keep some ideas in the vault for that last 6-weeks home stretch. In fact, I’ve always encouraged rookie teachers to do the same.
I have 5 weeks left of school. The weather is warming up here in the Buckeye state. The springtime panorama, which is the window of my classroom, is getting darned inviting. Conversely, reliable teaching strategies are becoming a bit stale. They’ve worked brilliantly all year, but now with the end in sight, I have to change things up in order to maintain that crucial student engagement.
This episode will focus on using Plickers as a classroom discussion tool. I first learned of this rather amazing platform while I was conducting PD 2 years ago. I was helping teachers individually when one of the attendees asked, Jim...have you ever used Plickers? I responded, No. I listened to her describe the platform and thought, That sounds fascinating and easy. I want to give it a try. I finally got around to it. The last 9-weeks of the year I love experimenting with new platforms. It was high time for my Plickers' maiden voyage.