I’m a teaching assistant at Hyde Community College, where we’ve been using Clicker for a few years now. I’m in charge of allocating laptops from the SEN department to students and showing them how to use Clicker. All our students are using it across the curriculum, and their progress has been recognised by the teachers. Not only this, but their behaviour has improved because they’re concentrating a lot more.
There is one year 9 boy in particular who absolutely loves Clicker. He has ADHD, learning difficulties and behavioural problems; when he joined us in year 7 his behaviour was a real struggle. But since using Clicker, his behaviour has improved immensely – all the teachers are really pleased with him. It has also transferred to his behaviour at home, which is fantastic.
He knows so much about the program, it’s amazing! He has it on his home computer too, so he’s always practising after school and showing his little brother how to use it. He even runs training sessions with me to teach other students how to use Clicker, which he really enjoys. He’s always asking me “Miss, when are we doing the next training session?”! When younger students are struggling with saving or printing their work, he loves offering to show them how to work the program, it’s so nice to see. I’ve now started giving the students Clicker expert badges, and they’re all so proud to show these off to everyone in the school.
This year 9 boy uses Clicker mainly for the word processing function, but he really enjoys making mind maps with Clicker Board too. The fact that he can change the background colour, the font colour, add in pictures, copy and paste information from the internet… He can do everything himself, so he’s really learning a lot from it. It’s given him a real confidence boost! The work he produces is amazing, particularly in his Science lessons; it’s brilliant that he can just add in subject-specific graphics from the built-in picture library. Like a lot of his teachers, his Science teacher has told me how amazed she is by the software and what a difference it’s making to his work and behaviour.
The thing that we’re most pleased with is that, because of Clicker, he is now above target level in eight of his subjects! It’s been so successful and I’m glad it’s being used more and more in school. A lot of the time, students are so proud of their work that they’re emailing it through to me before their teacher has even had a chance to send it to me! My long-term aim is to roll it out to the rest of the school so that many more students can have the same success as this boy.
Thank you, Crick, for everything you’ve done! We love Clicker.