Classroom Performance System (CPS) Clickers - Training and Support
1. The CPS Training Video Series and Quick Step Guides (PC) –Click link to view two to three minute videos for every feature. Each Quick Step Guide is usually one or two pages and are available to download.
2. Technical Support Toll-free Hotline: 1-888-333-4988, 5am to 6pm, Monday-Friday (CST).
When prompted press 1, press 2, then press 1.
3. eInstruction Community – Join the eI Community™ to connect with other educators, find free high-quality resources (including CPS lessons), and learn about the latest best practices and technologies in classroom instruction. www.eicommunity.com . There is also an icon within the CPS software to access the eI community.
Don’t Forget the Three Tabs in CPS – Prepare, Engage and Report
· In Prepare, you can create your classes and lessons, import and view our pre-made lessons, import ExamView content, create an answer key for your paper tests (fastgrade feature) or set up a team activity like our Challenge Board (Jeopardy Style Game).
· In Engage, get ready to hand out the clickers! You can engage a lesson, challenge board, examview test bank lesson or use the verbal mode with “on the fly” questions or online quiz content– always remember to detect your receiver first!
· Reports – Once you close out of your assessment, you can view different reports showing how each student and the class did on every question (and even for NYS standards if you linked them with your questions). You can choose to print the report or export it to another file format.
Important Notes – Messages you may see:
· A message may pop up each time you open CPS warning you that you are saving to a network drive, you can say yes/ok. This is just making sure you know it is being saved to a network and make sure it is backed up. Every week or two, back up your CPS folder on a flash drive or cd so if you ever lose your computer data, your cps database will not be lost.
· Update CPS software - if it asks if you want to update say no, you probably won’t have permission to do that anyway. Your network admin can do the updates when they are ready.
· You do not have to be online to use the clickers – say ok if it tells you that you are not online.
· Don’t create a NEW database at school… you should already have one!
I included directions below for the most popular features in CPS. Please view the online video tutorials and quick start guides for additional features.
To access the videos without links, go to www.einstruction.com, click Training in the Quick Links Box on the right side. Click on Resource and Videos.
Click on CPS 6 K-12 to see the modules.
Setting up your CPS Database – only do this once!
1. First save a CPS premade database folder for your grade or subject to your My Documents Folder. (They are in the RP common drive. If you don’t have access, let me know).
2. Double click on CPS icon on your computer desktop
3. If you opened up your CPS Premade Database on your classroom computer already than the software should open up automatically (say yes to message about network drive).
4. If not, Choose open an existing database (DO NOT click on Create a New Database)
5. Browse to your my documents folder
6. Double click on the cps folder you saved in your my documents folder, then double click on the database icon or click open.
7. Say Yes to the message about opening your database on a network drive.
8. The CPS software should open with your database lessons.
9. The next time you click on the CPS icon on your computer, it should automatically open up the software with your database lessons. If it doesn’t, then repeat steps 4-7.
**If you created a database in cps before this training, you don’t have to use a premade one.
Detect Your Receiver - Always “detect” the receiver before you engage a lesson with your students. This is so you know the computer recognizes that the receiver is plugged in so you can receive response from the clickers.
CPS Version 6.0 or higher
1. Put the receiver into your USB port on your classroom computer with the CPS software.
2. You will be clicking on the eInstruction icon in your system tray at the bottom right hand corner of the comptuer screen.
3. If you don’t see the eInstruction icon in the bottom right corner of your computer screen, click on the arrow button and will show the hidden icons.
4. Click on eInstruction Device Manager
5. If an icon that shows CPS RF Pulse Receiver graphic with a check mark next to it is in the box then the receiver has been detected.
6. If there is no icon for RF Pulse receiver or if there is one and it has ax X, delete the icon and go to options, then click on Discover Devices and the icon should appear.
Engage Your Lesson (lesson complete and ready to hand out the clickers)
Plug in and Detect your receiver, see above.
1. Click the Engage>Lessons and Assessments tab.
2. Select the lesson you want to engage by clicking in the check box before the lesson name.
3. Make sure your class is selected in the Engage Options box
4. Click Engage in the Teach box. Screen will go blank for a few seconds. It wil say detecting receiver and then the Engage toolbar appears.
5. Hand out the clickers to the students or have them take theirs from the bag.
6. Click Next #1 if you want to start with the first question and the question appears
7. Click start, grid with clicker number will appear on bottom of screen
8. Let students click in by clicking the buttons and clicking on send.
a. When students respond their respective boxes will flash blue
b. when a student answers for the first time
c. green when an answer is verified, and yellow to show an answer has changed.
9. Click end – view class answer distribution
10. Click the green arrow (facing right) to move to the next question.
11. repeat: Start button, students click in, end button, green arrow.
12. To close out of lesson click on the X in the lower left hand corner of the question screen.
13. Tool bar appears again, either:
a. click on close, then yes, to end assessment and go back to CPS software.
b. click on Exit CPS if you are leaving for the day and want to close out of the software completely. You can view reports another day.
Generate and Review Reports
Click Reports tab to view the results of a lesson.
a. click on the assessment you want to view (the latest assessments are on top) and click generate
b. click on a report and click preview
1. Instructor Summary (straight grading report)
2. Question Report (shows how every student responded to every question)
3. Study Guide (customized report for everyone student based on how they answered questions in that assessment)
4. Response Report (shows percentages of how students responded to each answer for every question)
c. when you want to close out of the report, click on close. You can now generate a different report or click close again to stop viewing reports.
CPS Clicker POPULAR FEATURES:
(to watch video or view and print quick start guide for PC click on link below)
http://www.einstruction.com/support_downloads/training/CPS6/K12.html#
Once you click on the video/quick guide link above, find the features you want to learn more about below:
1. Create and Edit Class Rosters
a. Module 1 – Create a class roster
b. Module 1 – Adding students and editing class roster
c. Importing Class Rosters (instructions below)
2. Creating a Fast Grade Lesson (using existing paper test or homework assignments)
a. Module 2 - Create a Fastgrade Lesson and
b. Module 2 - Engage Student Paced Mode (if you have infrared (IR) clickers, you need a projector, Radio Frequency (RF) clickers use the lcd screen on clicker)
3. Creating Folders, Lessons and Questions
a. Module 3 – Create Folders and Lessons
b. Module 3 – Create Questions in CPS
c. Module 3 – Add Graphics to a Question
4. Creating a CPS Challenge Board Team Activity (Jeopardy-style game)
a. Module 6 – Create a Challenge Board
b. Module 6 – Engage a Challenge Board
5. Engaging your students with a lesson and handing out the clickers
a. Verbal Lesson without preparing any questions ahead of time
i. Module 2 – Engage Verbal Questions
b. Engage a lesson with questions already prepared
i. Module 3 – Deliver Questions in Standard Mode
6. Generate and View Reports
a. Module 7- Generate, Print and Export Reports
7. CPS for Powerpoint – Must have software installed on your computer, this is a separate download. It uses the same database you already created. **You can’t have CPS and CPS for PPT open at the same time.
a. Module 5 CPS for Powerpoint – CPS software
i. Make your existing and new PPT presentions interactive!
For the following features, directions are included below:
· Importing a class roster from a student management system
· Engaging the Verbal Mode using the clickers with online quiz content like Brainpop, Castle Learning (School Island), Regentsprep.org, Master Guru, etc.
· Creating a lesson using Lesson Builder (pulling questions from different lessons to make a new one)
· Sharing a lesson with another teacher
· Working on lessons from home (download our software for free on your home computer)
· Add ExamView Test Banks from your publisher into your database so you can use with clickers.
Importing Class Rosters from Student Management System
If you have a class or classes in a different software application other than CPS (like a gradebook program of some kind), you can save that data as a specific file type (*.csv file type), make a few simple format changes, and then import that data into CPS. Some systems export right to excel.
· All you need are two columns, one for first names and one for last names
· Insert a row above the names, type in first above the first names (do not write first name) and type in last above the last names (do not write last name).
· Save this Excel file on your h drive as follows:
Save As: choose CSV file (comma delimited) from drop down menu
For file name, type in your class name to identify (per 1, per 2, etc.)
· Save and close the document. The document can’t be opened or it won’t import.
Import the .CSV Class Roster into your CPS Database:
1. Within CPS, click on the Classes tab
2. Click on the Import icon
3. Select ‘Comma Separated Values’ as the import source
4. Click the Next button
5. Click the Browse button
6. Select your .csv file
7. Click the Open button
8. Select the class (A checkmark will appear next to the class you select.)
9. Click the Next button
10.Click the Done button once CPS imports your .csv file
Engaging the Verbal Mode – use CPS with online quiz content like
Brainpop, Castle Learning (School Island), Regents Prep.org, Master Guru, etc.
CPS in verbal mode with online content like Castle Learning, Brainpop, etc. You can show a Brainpop video to the class and pull up the quiz and then the students click in to each answer. This mode allows you to get assessments as a class, question by question. You can re-teach after each question if necessary as well. You will get immediate feedback and record responses.
1. Open up your online quiz content. If you are using BrainPop, bring up the video you want to use. Minimize the window.
2. Open CPS from your desktop icon
3. Detect your receiver
4. Click the Engage>Lessons and Assessments tab.
5. Click Engage in the Verbal box (left side). The CPS Verbal Question Setup window appears.
6. Type the name of your Lesson in the title (this way you will know which lesson it is when you view the reports later)
7. Class Options – Select a class from the drop down menu (you may only have one class)
8. Click OK. The Verbal CPS Engage toolbar appears.
9. First Click the Options Button (you only have to do this the first time you use with online content, these setting will become default). In the Teacher Managed Tab, under Verbal Questions, make sure there is no check in the box next to Show Large Screen. This way you can see the online content questions and the CPS toolbar. Once you change this setting the first time it will be the default and you won’t have to do it again unless you want to change it back.
10. Now maximize the Brain Pop Screen/Castle Learning/online content screen. If in brainpop, show the video.
11. The CPS toolbar can be moved under the content or above it by clicking and holding the blue arrow icon and moving the toolbar.
12. Click on Review Quiz (brainpop) or have the first question opened in castle learning or your online content. Use the drop down button at bottom right of internet screen to increase the size of the quiz to the maximum where question and answers can still be seen on the screen at the same time. This is important b/c when you use the camera to take a snapshot of the question for the reports, the bigger the words are the better the picture.
13. Use the Verbal button on the toolbar to match the answer options for the question that you are using from your online content.
14. If it is a multiple choice question with 3 answer options, then click on the Verbal button and choose Multiple Choice A-C from the drop down menu.