Technology in Education - Plickers

Hello everyone welcome back to my blog, how are you doing? I hope you are doing great and blessed with vibrant energy to face this challenging worldly life J . So for the last 2 entries, I did mentioned about the usage of Prezi and Google form as education tools but for today I wanted to share my all-time favourite software for teaching which is Plickers! Why Plickers? Not Kahoot or Quizzes? Well read this article and I bet you will be on team Plickers!

First of all, Plicker is a software and app mainly use for evaluating student understanding about certain topics? I mainly use Plickers as an engagement for pre-knowledge session or formative test. Plickers is very easy to use and does not require longer time to understand. Educators can simply register their students name in Class rooster and print out QR code designated for each students.

Diagram 1 shows example of scoresheet in Plickers

You must be thinking that if I have 100 students, so I need to print 100 QR codes? That is not the level of Plickers ok. You only need to print the number of student in class and the same QR codes can be use for other class. This is because Plickers works by identifying the number associated with students so we can reuse it anytime we want.

Plicker can be entertaining for students because it is sort of like a quiz with students. Educators can be creative by having a class that is almost like a National Quiz challenge. Hence , prevent students from getting bored.  Well you must be thinking that what if my student does not own or cannot bring smartphone to school? I got you bro, Plickers only need the teacher smartphone for scanning the QR code so no gadjet for students just the QR code.

Diagram 2 shows example of question

However , the downside of Plickers are , it only can be used for objective as the QR code only has A,B,C,D option but not structure.  So ,  for teachers who want to fully evaluate their students comprehension need to take extra mile and cannot wholly depend on Plickers. The other lack of Plickers is, free version only allow educators to make 5 questions per set, which is teacher need to have many sets if they wanted to do more but it is still free.

I still remember my students reaction when they first tried Plickers with me, they were so excited and I can see the competitiveness between their mates to the extent they are booing or high five if their friends got wrong or right. Well of course , it is a bit challenging to control students but at least they are not sleepy. Plickers does help me going through afternoon class just to make them wake up and focus.

Overall, Plickers does help me in quick assessment before proceeding to next subtopic in order to analyse and observe my student’s understanding but the authenticity of it could be challenge because students might blindly follow their friend’s answer.

Thank you J

Technology in Education - Google Form

Hello and welcome back to my blog, hopefully you are doing well. So this is my second entry for my Technology in Education, where I did some review/reflection on updated tools for learning. Ok let’s get to it. For this entry I will chanting about Google form, ok I think everyone has the experience of using Google chrome at least to fill some survey for Phd students, materialistic shopping survey and random feedbacks about an event.

Here is the link to my simple science test which covered 2 chapters in form 2 (Biodiversity and Ecosystem) https://forms.gle/ACdYGhdMQvsvCzF5A

Well little do we know that Google form is multifunctional and can be used for education purpose especially assessment. I started to discover the usage of Google form for education in January 2019. This is because, I was the form 1 science coordinator and if you are familiar which MRSM system each new students need to sit for a pre-test for classifying and evaluating their knowledge in science. As we all know, every school will produce exam questions and this required the usage of papers.  So, being a biology teacher, I am not favour in using too much paper and end up throw it away because the pre-test is a one off session plus different set of question will be used for next year.

Diagram 1 shows how many students got it right for a question

Hence, I thought of using Google form as an alternative for my students to take the test. So I copied all the exam question in the form. This will reduce the usage of papers and also save money. The advantages of Google form are, teacher does not need to check the answer manually because it is automatically set up in the Google form. So this will save teacher’s time in marking. Moreover, Google form is really suitable for objective questions since it is just simple tick and check. The best part about Google form is easy to use and understand plus the layout is simple and does not have too much fancy designs. Less fancy design is important for a test because not to distract students from the main purpose.

Diagram 2 shows individual marks and each response for question 

Furthermore, we can add colourful pictures in Google Form which is something that very expensive if we wanted to produce color printed test. This is very good to enhance student’s ability in understanding the question and getting better result. However, in real exam we cannot have a color pictures so the result obtained might not reflecting students understanding but I do not think it will affect the majority of students, only a few special cases.

Google form is reusable and students can redo the questions as many as they wanted. Moreover, the questions order can be reshuffle so this can prevent students from cheating or copying their friends answer.

Diagram 3 shows a disadvantage of Google form which for structured question the word need to be exactly the same otherwise it will be consider wrong

However, the downside of Google form is it only suitable for objective question but not the long structured question. The efficacy of automatic checker is applicable only for objective, so teacher still need to manually check the structured or long answer question on the screen. This is not really good because it will cause eye fatigue and damaged our eyesight.  Another downside, is the school must possess good computer and internet infrastructure to execute Google form. For example, if we wanted to do a test for 100 students which is impossible for a school to have 100 working computers at the same time, teachers need to do it by class and quarantine other class in order to prevent cheating.

I think that’s all for today, see you in another entry about Plickers

Technology in Education - Prezi

Hello everyone! I hope you guys are having a good day, J it has been such as long time since I updated this blog, I think it was in 2016 where I posted about a snowy York, UK.  I graduated in July 2017 and luckily got into teaching industry immediately on December 2017. I got posted in very nice forestry area in Sarawak which is Betong. I think I like about this school is during early morning it was very foggy and cold, something that you cannot experienced daily in urban area.

Diagram 1 Different science chapters that I made by using Prezi

The first time I heard about Prezi when I came to MRSM Betong, it was an idea from my colleague.  I was impressed with the swift transition of Prezi and decided to use it in my daily teaching. I taught science form 2 in 2018 and during that time the new syllabus textbook, KSSM (Kurikulum Standard Sekolah Menengah) was not out yet. So, I took an initiative to do Prezi just to share any notes in advance for them to look and study during their holidays.  

Video showing my students doing notes from Prezi

I like to use Prezi because it is available online not like PowerPoint, so student can access it anytime and anywhere if they wanted to do some revisions. Moreover, I can share it with other teachers from so they would have chances to explore and took my Prezi as references for their teaching session.

I still remember my student’s reaction when I used Prezi, they were amazed and wow with the cool transition between each slide. I think it is a good way to introduce them with current technology so students will be advanced and informative. So in the video, you can see students were taking notes and learn independently from viewing the slide. I usually use Prezi as well for teaching but decided to change it into more student centred.

You must be thinking, why not I use Padlet which is better for sharing information. The reason is because I just knew about Padlet but still not into it so, I decided to share knowledge via Prezi. Furthermore, I can fixed on what students should see and got from Prezi such as I can make the information is in the syllabus and not out of context. Hence, each students will got the similar set of knowledge.

My students are doing their notes

Although Prezi seems really catchy with their recently launched video presentation (I did not try it yet) but every good things must have little dark side and this apply to Prezi as well.  Prezi as we all know only can access online and living in rural area Betong, it is really hard to have a very good access to internet, so because of this it restrict my student’s capability to do note/revision during their school holiday. Moreover, Prezi required a very high-speed internet and good computer processor otherwise the transition will be stuck.

Overall, I think Prezi is a good alternative for PowerPoint , although it is not that useful such as Padlet where we can put more things but at least we have something distinctive from other educators daily usage , so this will trigger student’s attention to learn more about the subject.