Plicker, what the heck is a Plicker?!? Basically, Plickers is an audience response system like clickers and Poll Everywhere. I just discovered it, and I am yelling about it from the rooftops.

I have been experimenting with it in my JCC office, and I am blown away by its capability. It is time to tell you about it.

In a recent book review I wrote, Dr. Ruth Clark (2010) pointed out presentations using clickers resulted in higher grades than those without. Clickers are great ways to increase engagement in a classroom; however, clickers can be expensive. Poll Everywhere is another alternative and quite effective. I am offering a third choice called Plickers. The benefits of Plickers are that it is free, easy to execute, and quick reporting. I was demoing the product in a matter of minutes.

What’s needed?

To use Plickers, three things are needed… and technically, only two things are needed:

• Website displaying Plickers (optional)
• Mobile device with Plickers application. Available for both Android and iOS products.
• Plicker cards.

Plicker Card

The basic element is the Plicker card. The Plicker Web site has Plicker cards that you can download and print on a local printer. Cards come in sets of 40 or 63. You distribute the plicker cards to your students. Each card has a number and you can associate a specific card to a student.

This card is number 1 and orientated to “B”

On each card, there is also a letter associated with a specific orientation of the card. You need to instruct your students to hold up their card with the letter they would like to display oriented to the top of the card. The mobile application will then read the card and record the result.

Classes, Questions, and Results

In terms of using the cards, you could hand out cards each class and keep the responses anonymous, or you could issue your students their own card and record this with the Plickers software.  If students are identified by card, their results will be logged against their name in the software.  Students can be organized in classes. Additionally, questions can be grouped in a class.

Questions can be developed on the Website or created on the fly in the mobile app. Questions can be true/false or multiple choice. You can assign a correct answer for quizzing or leave it unanswered for polling.

When using Plickers, you can display a question on the screen. While using the mobile device to capture responses, you can automatically see the results display on the screen… or not; you also have the option to hide the results panel. While displaying the results, you can show who has answered or show a graph of the results. Finally, you can also show the correct answer after all results are in.

Showing Plicker results coming in

Reports

Plickers will also keep track of questions you have asked and the results.

Plickers report

Plickers Help can provide much more information about their product and what it can do. I am tremendously pleased with what I have seen so far and look forward to new features as they are created.

One final note: It is a quick way to take attendance.

If you are on the JCC campus and would like a demo, please contact me.

References

Additional Reading

• Clickers (Audience Response Systems)
• Poll Everywhere

Stan Skrabut, Ed.D.

Stan is Director of Technology-Enhanced Instruction. He has over 20 years experience working as an instructional technologist and trainer. He has a master’s degree in computing technology in education and a doctorate in education specializing in instructional technology.