CPS Clickers & The Binder Check

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Yesterday, I attended a training lead by the two trainers from eInstruction.  They did a fabulous job.  However, I struggled with finding a use for the response system in my AVID class and posted this tweet:

"Attending student response training. Tedious grading is now taken care of with SRS system. Just realized I don't do much "tedious" work."

The trainers said that the CPS clicker takes out all the tedious work of the classroom.  Later in the training, I realized the most tedious thing that happens in my AVID classroom is binder checks and the clickers could take care of that and free up some paper to stay as a tree.

So how can I do this?  Great question and I'm not entirely sure of the answer yet.  Here's what I am thinking though.

• In  the CPS software, I can create a "Fast Grade" assignment.
• In that assignment, I can create a numeric question for each category on the binder rubric.  For instance, one category is supplies (3 pens, 3 pencils, highlighter) and is worth 10 points.  That would be a 10 point question.
• I repeat this for each category.
• Once I create this assignment, I can keep it in the software for every time that I want to use it.

Now, for the class, I put the rubric on the white board screen, perhaps as a PDF from the AVID curriculum CD.  Then I give each student a clicker.  I start the assignment.  As they grade each others binders they can enter scores for each category.  Once they finish one category, the system moves onto the next question.  There will be no wasted time using this system.  And whey they finish, they can move on the next task in class.  

In the software, I can access a spreadsheet that has all the scores.  I can see which student scored what in each category.  The one thing I'm not sure of is whether the software will add up the categories for each student or not.  That might be something that I have to do.  


That is how I plan on using student response clickers for binder checks in AVID.  I'll let you know how it goes in the fall.