Picture this… you are sitting in class, taking notes while the professor is lecturing, and then, she pauses and turns to the class to ask a question.  She is waiting for an answer.  What do you do?  You avoid eye contact so that she doesn’t call on you.  You bury your head in your laptop, or you start texting on your cell phone…

Sound familiar?

So, how is the faculty member supposed to decide who to call on, when everyone is avoiding the situation?  Watch out, students, as faculty now have help with the Pick A Student app!

I found this app listed in an article on Edutopia titled “Teach with Your iPhone: Apps to Use in the Classroom.”  Here is the suggestion for using Pick A Student.

It’s important that all students are held accountable during class discussions and everyone has a chance to speak his or her mind. Replace that old coffee-can-with-popsicle-sticks method and choose which student to call on using the Pick a Student app. Type in the names of the students in your class — use multiple class lists if you work with many groups of students — and the app does the rest. Press a button on the screen each time you want to randomly call on a student, and a name will pop up. I love placing my phone under the ELMO document camera in my classroom so everyone can see who I’ll be calling on next.

I am so tempted to try this…