There are many things in the classroom that teachers have to look out for and peer pressure is definitely one of them
. Many teachers have used the age old teaching methods of asking questions and looking for a show of hands to find out what pupils think about a topic or subject. The problem with this method is that some pupils may not respond in an honest manner. They may decide to look at their friends first and then copy the answer that they give in order to fit in with their pals. Some pupils may think they will be disliked if they get all the answers right or hold a certain opinion so may deliberately tell the wrong answer to minimise any trouble they may receive from fellow pupils.
Anything which distorts peoples genuine beliefs or answers can make life difficult for a teacher but this is where student response systems can provide a great deal of assistance in the classroom. For the student response systems to work well, each pupil will be given the opportunity to answer anonymously and their results will be directly collated onto a database. The teacher can see their answers but there is no need for anyone else to ever see their opinions. This should allow a pupil to answer honestly, which is always going to be of benefit to a teacher and the educational system.
Another great thing about educational technology products like student response systems is that they can increase the amount of time a teacher has to spend. If a teacher set a quiz for a class of 30 pupils, they would need to mark 30 different answer papers. This can be time consuming, even for multiple choice quizzes but the fact that student response systems will place the answers directly onto a database with each child having their own space or file greatly speeds up the process.
Teachers will be able to have quizzes on a more regular basis and this can help them compile a better understanding of what a child is learning. These results can be easily tabulated into a graphic form, perhaps on a line or bar chart, which also makes it easier to show the progress or decline of a pupil. This should make parent teacher evenings a lot easier to get through as the stark nature of a chart can often explain a childs progress more vividly than trying to explain it.