How often do you use Activote in your lessons?

[michele.horsburgh]

Hoping for some informal feedback here regarding use of Activote in a teaching week. Do you have the handsets avaliable all the time for learners so that at any point you can gather a response or do you tend to plan their use?

[Alison]

We only have one set at the moment, for a very large school. Luckily for me as ICT Co-ordinator, the set is kept in my room. :D I would say I use it on average once or twice a week. Usually one planned and one ad hoc, but it can vary. I can end up using it practically every day, but then not for a couple of weeks.

I would say that I would love to have them out all the time, but as I teach infants, it wouldn't be practical! Oh, and I always use them when I'm being observed...wows them every time! :cool:

[saha]

My suitcase with activotes is always open in the classroom.
My students have come to accept it naturally as part of learning in my class.

They do not know if I am going to do anonymous or named mode. No one wants to get a answer wrong...so they are always on their toes..specially when I threaten to make a activote session a quiz an any instant :))

I also have a Quizdom set of remotes which I used to administering exams.

It would be nice to be able to get rid of Quizdom remotes once Promethean Activotes can do asynchronous voting.

[Dug]

Kids get them out in the morning so they're in hand all day. Because we use labelled/named devices (a BRILLIANT innovation BTW) the kids can always locate their personal devices after playtime/lunch etc.
I nearly always try to fit a planned vote into my sessions but this is best suited to Maths where I always have a fairly complex flp prepared in advance with at least 1 voting page. Usually I will have a pre-lesson/end of lesson assessment type vote and I nearly always use the 'Learning Mountain' page (see thread below on this forum).
I find that if the kids have the devices out and in their hands, I (and the kids) am much more open to ad-hoc/discussion type votes. Kid's say on at least a daily basis "Can we vote on that?".
Not all my colleagues are as sold on them and have taken some persuading (the named devices thing has really helped here!) but as a teacher that 'floats' for half the week, I make sure that I use voting in every class at least once each week from Reception to Y6 (I'm going to introduce voting to Nursery tomorrow- GULP).
I have used voting in just about every curriculum area, Circle-time, Philosophy for Children, etc.
Sorry, I seem to be banging on a bit, but, as you can probably tell, I quite like voting.

[Margaret Allen]

http://www.prometheanworld.com/common/html/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=1737&highlight=nursery

Here is a fantastic video clip of children in a nursery being asked to justify their responses using voting in named mode.... The Nursery teacher is reading using a book and then uses voting and her board to check children's understanding of the story...[clap]

[Dug]

Today's Nursery experience was excellent. Obviously it was really just a familiarisation exercise as the kids are all 3 year olds and some have only been in school since Christmas. I did a dramatic getting out of the case "What do you think's in here?" etc. Opened up, showed the devices, passed them out. Kids were really excited "Look my lights flash!", "Mine's got buttons!" even "Mine's got numbers..." (slightly worrying). Asked them what they thought they were and got responses such as eggtimer, mobile phone, TV remote etc. Explained that they are a bit like the TV remote except we all have one and that they 'talk' to the IWB instead of a telly. Talked about the device/buttons etc then drew a circle with a capital A on the IWB and asked if anyone could see abutton with this on, they practised pressing the button then we voted for real. 13 out of 14 got it! same with B and C.
Time was up but when I asked who'd like to do some more voting next week - sea of hands.
Great experience. I can see this really working.