ENJOY Tech    Interactive Specialist
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Texting Welcomed in Interactive Learning Classrooms

ENJOY Technology’s FullText^sm response system improves on the clicker

MINNEAPOLIS, MN, April 12, 2010—Teachers will soon promote texting in class—as long as it utilizes an interactive audience response system. Much improved from the “clicker”, the newest response system from ENJOY Technology http://www.enjoy-ars.com is an assessment tool that collects and organizes student answers to tests and homework using a handheld remote control. The RF219 FullText^sm system operates like the keypad on a cell phone and lets students type text answers to quizzes and test questions. The technology capitalizes on students’ expert cell phone texting skills. ENJOY’s FullText^sm response system allows students to communicate answers directly to the teacher’s computer (and only to the teacher) and allows teachers to read and grade the answers on the computer. The FullText^sm response system frees teachers from the hassle of managing volumes of loose papers and organizes resulting data for more thorough and timely review.

“The ideas for the new cutting edge handheld remote control came from teachers who wanted a way to ask more complex questions that better measure what students have learned,” says ENJOY co-founder Ada Chen. “Traditional response systems are limited to A-F multiple choice, true–false, and numeric answers. The RF219 continues ENJOY’s focus on easy-to-use and cost-effective educational technology.” Chen noted that ENJOY systems work directly with Microsoft PowerPoint to make it easy for teachers to move their existing test questions and quizzes onto the response system.

FullText^sm has a cell phone like key pad for typing letters A-Z, numbers, punctuation, and capitalization so students can respond in complete, grammatically-correct sentences. FullText^sm also handles multiple choice, true/false, numeric, and the popular Jeopardy^® style quiz-bowl questions. The complete FullText^sm response system includes student handsets, teacher controller control with a built-in laser pointer, software, and carrying case.

Humanities teacher Michael Potts at St. Anthony Middle School in New Brighton, MN, described how he has looked at response systems (clickers) for his classes. “Teachers know how time consuming it is to read hand written answers and grade tests. ENJOY’s new FullText^sm system will save teachers time by letting students use their already expert flying thumbs to answer test questions directly to a computer. Functionally, other response systems were too limited for Humanities and language classes and they were expensive. The FullText^sm system is an interesting improvement for clickers and would be useful in my classes. I’ll take another look at them, especially since the prices have come down.”