Wednesday, April 11, 2007
New Initiative Grant To Purchase I-Clickers
I wanted to update my blog on my experience so far with the i-clickers. So far I have still enjoyed using them. Student like the use of the remotes and I like the ease of use. I like the fact that they can be utilized with any presentation application (PowerPoint, Excel, etc). I also like the ability to display and graph students’ responses (correct/incorrect answers) which encourages thoughtful discussion. Using the i-clickers, the students' participation levels have increased and further class discussion and debate have been stimulated as a result. Due to the flexibility of this system, it could also be used for attendance and for credit assignments to include quizzes. There are many teaching and learning opportunities available with this system. I have enjoyed using it so much that I have written a “new initiative” grant at my college to purchase a set of 100 clickers (and base). This system (as are all similar systems) is not cheap. It will cost about $3000 for this set. I will not know until May if the grant is funded, however, I will keep my fingers crossed.
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4 comments:
Hi - do you have a breakdown for the cost? I explored the iclicker site but couldn't seem to locate the cost of the base, cost per unit, etc. We have CPR (essentially grant money) or personal budgets that could be used to get the clickers.
I floated the concept to some of my classes this week and they all seem to really like the idea - even though I warned them about the 'having to pay attention' part of the equation.
Starting May 1st , the prices are $26.50 per clicker and $350 for the instructor base/receiver. However, the base is free with an adoption of 100 clickers. The briefcase to hold the clickers & base is about $120 and shipping and handling is about $40.
Sounds great. I hope you get the grant. 3000 dollars is a little pricey for my school, but like I said before we have two used set at the school with about 20 clickers each set. This is to share between 25 teachers, but luckily clickers have not caught on yet so I can use them when ever I like.
Good luck with the grant. The worse thing that could happen is that they say no for this year. Its better than not trying at all!! As an educator, $3000 is cheap if you are improving the learning process for the students. Providing a better education is our goal and the system will be used multiple sections over multiple years so the cost per student is fairly low. Good luck,
Ken
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