Wake up and pick up your clickers...nap time is over kids.

   Im sure students, just like myself, have a very difficult time staying awake in some classes, especially if those classes include making yourself present and ready to learn at 8am...every morning, or every other morning. Those of us who are hoping to get a few minutes of shut eye to catch up on the sleep we missed the night before/the morning of class has come to an end...or it is slowly coming to an end. Professors are now assigning hand held "clickers" to students to help them be more responsive and focused on the lesson. With the clickers, students may walk into class and mark themselves present, they are used for multiple choice quizzes usually given within 5 minutes of the start of class and can count for a large percentage of their grade. E-Mailing, texting and napping have all become more difficult due to the need to pay attention so that students may respond during class.  The clickers are the most popular within Universities such as Northwestern University, Harvard, University of Alabama and Vanderbilt. Though the majority of the hand held devices are being used amongst young adults in college (some community colleges are also adopting the clickers), high schools and middle schools are becoming more aware of their positive significance among student's participation as well as conferences and other meetings. Though some students may not be as happy about every 15 minutes being asked to "grab your clickers" some think it has really reinforced what students are suppose to be doing and there is more participation from all of the students, making the classroom environment more active. Students say they also enjoy the anonymity the hand held device; some students will be more apt to speaking aloud and providing more discussion to the lesson, if they first see that they are not the only ones who have chosen a certain answer or feel the same as other students. When asked a question, students are shown a screen that provides bar graph images of students who have chosen this or that. The clickers are bought for about $30-70 each which the students may purchase or the professors provide for a semester.
      The invasion of clickers among students is making its way across the nation and proving to be a positive encounter amongst students and their teachers, bosses and coworkers etc... The usage of these new handheld devices are giving students more incentive to keep up in class; making it more difficult to wonder off in texting or surfing the net as well as making it harder not to pay attention which only improves the students ability to learn the materials needed for assignments and tests.