Review the Clicker Guide for Students as well as this guide. ICT has a set of clickers and a receiver that can be loaned for you to try. Be committed to using the clickers to add value to your course before asking students to buy clickers. See the list of clicker-equipped classrooms and channel numbers.
Use of the clicker in a class requires a receiver attached to a computer. EMAP is installing TurningPoint 2008 receivers in a large number of classrooms that have media consoles already. Alternatively portable receivers can be purchased at the Campus Computer Store and easily used with your laptop or other computer.
Turning Technologies software is available for download if you want to create your polling or quiz questions in advance, or are interested in trying it out.
We try to maintain the most up-to-date version of the Turning software at this location, as Turning is constantly updating their software to increase functionality or fix problems with it. If you have installed an older version than what is listed here, you will have to uninstall your previous version of Turning Point before updating to any newer version.
Macintosh TurningPoint Download ** Ver. 1.2.3 (NOTE: Only works with Office 2004)
Macintosh TurningPoint Anywhere ** Ver 3.0.2 (Mac OS 10.4-10.7)
Results Manager for Mac - Enables you to collate an entire term of results into one file for reporting/export
Users Guide for Results Manager for Mac (PDF)
Results Manager for PC - Enables you to collate an entire term of results into one file for reporting/export
Users Guide for Results Manager for PC (PDF)
Once you have downloaded the software, you will need to open the file to install it.
The Turning Technologies software integrates easily with PowerPoint for displaying your questions. In addition, when doing recorded polling, the Turning Technologies software creates an Excel-format file with the Device IDs of clickers that responded and the respective responses. To associate a student with a set of responses this file needs to be compared with the PAWS My Courses class list that contains registered clicker information.
There are a number of steps you can take at the beginning of each presentation to ensure that it will run smoothly.
Turning Technologies software supports both recorded and anonymous polling. For recorder polling, the TurningPoint menu bar should indicate (Auto) beside Participants; for Anonymous polling it should indicated (Anonymous). Auto records the Device IDs for clickers and these will show up in the reports with students’ responses. Anonymous polls do not record Device IDs.
To save the response information gathered during the presentation so that you can run reports later you will need to save your session before exiting the presentation. To save the session, click the "Save" icon on the TurningPoint menu bar. This will save a file in .tpz format that can be opened at a later time.
It is possible to set up a Participant List to use for your sessions that will include your students’ information in the report as well as the Device ID. In order to maintain the confidentiality of student information, caution must be used when using participant lists to ensure the information is not accidentally saved on public computers. To set up a Participant List, click on Participants on the TurningPoint menu bar, choose Participant List Wizard from the drop down menu and follow the directions.
Students can purchase clickers at the Campus Computer Store. Before you require students to purchase clickers for your classes, contact the Campus Computer Store to ensure there is sufficient stock available or that they can be ordered in time for your needs.
Be prepared with a policy for how you will deal with a dead battery or a lost or forgotten clicker during a quiz. For large classes there could be several of these on any given day.
A central clicker registration system has been developed for students to self-register their clicker Device IDs. Currently only Turning Technologies model RF clickers should be registered through the PAWS channel. This permits some degree of data validation as clicker numbers are being entered.
The clicker registration system will log when students register clickers or remove their clicker registration. This information can be made available to you for your classes upon request to your local IT support staff or the ICT Help Desk. Students should be reminded to inform you if they change their clicker registration.
The Clicker ID is now available from within the Grade Center in BBLearn. By default, the Clicker ID column does NOT appear within the Grade Centre when a BBLearn or Course Tools course is created. To add it to the Grade Centre or to update the listing of Clicker IDs, click on the the "Add Clicker ID to Gradebook" link within the Course Tools section of the Control Panel in your course.
The addition of clicker IDs to the gradebook is dynamic, so as students purchase and register their clicker, that ID will appear in the Grade Centre column. If a student does not register a clicker, the clicker Device ID field for that student will be blank. Unfortunately Clicker IDs are not available in the Advisor Services class list at this time.
At the moment the class list is generated, it will have the current clicker registration data included. However, at any subsequent time, it is possible that students will remove their clicker registration (because it was lost) or register a new clicker. A class list can therefore become obsolete, as is the case when students add or drop the class.
Instructors should promptly update their grade books during the term using recently generated class lists. Waiting until the end of the term can be problematic as a number of students may no longer have the same clicker number registered at the end of term as they had during early classes. Between these changed registrations, as well as students adding or dropping your class, matching up students and clicker Device IDs might be difficult.
If you intend to only conduct opinion polls in class and do not need to associate a particular response with a particular student, then simply ignore or delete the clicker registration column from the class lists that you download from PAWS My Courses.
BBLearn/Course Tools now provide direct integration with TurngingPoint software, via the LMS Integration tool contained in TurningPoint 2008, Results Manager and TurningPoint AnyWhere. This integration enables instructors to quickly and easily download participant lists from the BBLearn Grade Centre, and upload Turning session information back into the Grade Centre. Check out our instructions for downloading Participants Lists, and our instructions for uploading results!.
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For training options for instructors regarding clickers, see http://taurus.usask.ca/courses/registrationmain.cfm?coursecategoryid=14
For assistance or to report problems with the receiver or software in media console you can call EMAP (DMT) for support from the telephones provided in the classrooms.
For assistance or problems with clicker registration, your own copy of the software, or clicker ownership history contact the ICT Help Desk or your college IT support staff.
For more information about the TurningPoint student response system visit the Turning Technologies website. Online training, best practices, case studies and other information is available in the Turning Technologies Learning Community.
If you are interested in incorporating clickers into your teaching and would like more information, please contact:
Tyson Brown
ICT Instructional Support Services
E-mail:
Phone: 306-966-4758
Download this presentation provided by Turning Technologies. This presentation provides a comprehensive overview of clicker technologies and some excellent examples of clicker-enabled questions in use
Download the full users guide for using TurningPoint 2008 within PowerPoint 2007
