Clicker
5 Graphic Organizers
One
of the very best pieces of software that was Ministry of Education
licensed with incredible takeup has been Clicker 4 and now Clicker
5. In its
simplest,
it's
a Special Education program that lets you use popup grids to piece
together sentences. Expand the functionality and it becomes a talking
word processor. Expand the functionality again and you have a multimedia
authoring tool that works on both the Windows and Macintosh OS X platforms.
This is important because Clicker does become one piece of software that can be used effectively for all students. In these days with a legitimate need for differentiated instruction, Clicker 5 becomes a terrific tool that enables this differentiation all with the same tool.
When you put the right tool in the hands of students, along with appropriate activities, every student wins.
One of the teaching techniques that has proven consistent results is the use of Graphic Organizers to help students organize their thoughts with concept mapping. In Ontario, we saw this first with the Appleworks Graphic Organizers in the Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner and then the Ministry licensed SMART Ideas was a full fledged Graphic Organizer program. The graphic organizers that were shipped with the Curriculum Unit Planner are available in SMART Ideas format and can be downloaded from the OSAPAC Learning Object Repository.
Since Clicker 5 is the perfect tool, it makes sense to have the same functionality available there as well. For example, here's a Fishbone diagram which illustrates how a series of things can lead to an event.
Or, there's the Agree/Disagree Chart to let students analyze a topic by viewing both sides of an argument.
All of the Graphic Organizers that were shipped with the Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner are available for download and use. Each organizer appears as both a Clicker 5 document and a Clicker 5 template.
They're ready to use right out of the box. Just hold down the SHIFT key and click in the appropriate box to begin entering your text. One of the very nice features of Clicker is the manner in which it automatically adjusts the font size as you type. In terms of ease of use, students don't have to worry about their font sizes and can just let Clicker 5 do its thing.
The documents are not protected so you can switch to Edit Mode and make any changes that you need. Clicker 5 is so easy to work with in that respect.
The archive of Graphic Organizers in Clicker 5 format are downloadable from the OSAPAC Learning Objects repository.
A note of appreciation needs to go to Deborah Barrows from Crick Software for submitting the arrows collection which makes some of the graphic organizers possible.
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