Clicker 5 Tutorial

Clicker 5 Tutorial The Clicker 5 Window Clicker Writer Navigation between grids Cells Clicker Grid

The Clicker 5 Templates When you create a Grid Set, there are many templates to choose from: Blanks – these are templates set up without cells and you can add cells on to the blank grid Book Making – these are templates containing full-screen, linked grids or ‘pages’. There is a cover page, followed by a number of pages with spaces for a picture and text. There are buttons to page forward and back, and a ‘listen’ button to hear what you write. On some of the templates there are also buttons that open pop up grids which you can use to add words or pictures to the grids. Classifying – each template contains four grids that let you classify words or pictures into groups. Labelling – each template contains four full-screen grids with areas for pictures, with text labels. There are also templates for labelling parts of a Background Picture. Phrases – these are writing grids with long cells: ideal for phrases. Picture Banks – these are writing grids with large cells that fill the grid: ideal for pictures. Sentence Building– these are writing grids with cells, a forward button and a full stop. The Forced Order template contains writing grids with colour-coded groups of cells. Only one group can be clicked on at a time – useful for forcing the correct syntax of a sentence. The Modelled Sentence Building template contains writing grids that include a large cell, into which you can enter a model word, phrase or sentence. When you click on it, it speaks the text in it, rather than writing it. Word Banks – these are writing grids that you can use for word banks. Keyboard Controls - In Run Mode Shift + Click on cell = Change the content of cells. Click on word = word read out loud for you. Keyboard Controls - In Edit Mode Shift + Click on cell = Change the content of cells. Right click on cell = options such as cut, copy and delete. Also cell properties. Command (apple) key + click = selecting the cell (can select more than one). To toggle between edit mode and run mode, could click mode name in bottom left hand corner.

Clicker 5 Tutorial Introducing Edit Mode To open the Edit menu and select Edit Mode. When you enter Edit Mode, the Editing Toolbar appears:

Explorer shows Clicker Explorer. Cell Palette lets you add cells to the grid. Pictures lets you add pictures to cells Sounds lets you add sounds to cells. Grid lets you change the Grid Properties Writer shows Clicker Writer Settings for the current Grid Set. Speech lets you change the voice used for speech. Tools lets you show or hide the Clicker Writer and Grid toolbars. In Edit Mode, you can position or resize cells by dragging them. You can also right-click on a cell or the grid to view a pop-up menu, which makes it easy to edit your grids. If you right-click on a cell, the pop-up menu lets you listen to a cell, or edit the text without holding the Shift key.

More About Explorer In Run Mode

In Edit Mode

Clicking Explorer will return you to the opening page showing all the Clicker grids you have previously saved. When you go into a different grid or start new one, you will be asked if you want to save the changes to the grid you were working on previously.

Clicking Explorer will take you to the sequence view where you can see all grids in the sequence as well as any associated grids such as pop-up grids. You can change the order here or delete grids. You can also add grids.

Getting Ready-Made Grids There are a large number of grids made up other teachers and uploaded to the Grids for Learning area on the CrickSoft website. You can get there by clicking on the LearningGrids.com link in the Clicker home page or by typing the address in directly to a browser and registering to use the resources. If you are using the link from Clicker 5, you will be asked to send an electronic registration in first so you will need to have enough licenses for the software to do this. If you go through your browser, the address is: http://www.learninggrids.com/

Clicker 5 Tutorial Book Making Instructions

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Open Clicker 5 or Click on the Explorer Folder and click on ‘Create New Grid Set’ under the green arrows.

Double click on Book Making in the list of templates that opens up and double click on Landscape 12. Then click the ‘Create’ button.

Change the title by holding down Shift and clicking in the title cell. You will now be able to edit the title. Just click outside of the cell when finished. Insert a Graphic: 1. Click on Edit – click on Edit Mode. Edit mode needs to be opened everytime you want to add pictures, change cells or add sounds and video. 2. Click on the Pictures icon on the floating toolbar. 3. Double click on the folder where your picture is located (you can look through your own computer files or use the picture library and photo resources build into Clicker 5) 4. Find a picture you want on the cover of your book 5. Hold down the Shift key and click and drag the picture from the Picture Palette to the graphic window (big cell) on your cover page (be sure to let go of the Shift key last) If you don’t hold down the shift key, you will also drag in the file name beneath the picture.

Type the name of the Author in the bottom text box by holding Shift-click and typing the name of the author Click the right arrow to go to the next page (grid) and add text and pictures to the next few pages Save your grid – File – Save Grid Set As – give it a name

Image Property Options To make a Graphic Transparent 1. Right click (Mac -Ctrl-click) on the picture cell. Select Properties 2. Change the Background color from white to transparent 3. Deselect the show border box. There are a number of other options here for images such as alignment and text below the picture. You can also remove the image from here. To add a hotspot to a picture 1. Click on the Cell Palette button on the floating toolbar. 2. Drag a cell onto the grid. 3. Change the cell properties to make it transparent and without a border. 4. To add a ToolTip and change the Point, click on the General tab in Cell Properties. 5. Resize and move the cell to cover the part of the picture where you want the hotspot. 6. Drag a video or sound file onto the hotspot cell.

Clicker 5 Tutorial Sentence Building Instructions (sending/non-sending) Open Clicker 5 or Click on the Explorer Folder and click on ‘Create New Grid Set’ under the green arrows.

Double click on Sentence Building in the list of templates that opens up and double click on Sentence Building again and then choose the 4x2 grid. Then click the ‘Create’ button.

Add these words to the cells in a mixed up order (one word per cell) “The nasty boy pulled the little cat’s tail.” Tip: You can use tab to shift across to the neighbouring cell to enter contents faster. You will notice that when you type in boy, Clicker 5 automatically places a picture of a boy in the cell. However when you type cat’s, it doesn’t add a picture due to the use of the apostrophe. Clicker 5 will automatically add a picture if there is one for that word in the library. You are now going to add a cat picture to the cell that has the word cat’s. To do this: 1. Go into Edit Mode (double click on bottom left hand corner). 2. Click on Pictures and double click on the Crick Picture Library 2. 3. Find the cat in the Animal Life folder 4. Hold down the Shift key and drag the cat picture onto the cell with cat’s Exit Edit Mode and try clicking on the cells. You will see the word and the picture appear up in the writer area. However, there would be times when we wouldn’t want the picture to appear in the writer as some older children might feel embarrassed that they need picture support when their work is printed. We therefore want the cells to send the word but not the picture when clicked on. To do this: 1. In Edit Mode, right click (ctrl click) on the cell with the cat picture. 2. Choose Properties and then select the Send tab. 3. Untick Send Picture Shown in Cell. 4. Close the properties window and now try clicking on the cell. Recording Sound into Cells There may be times when you want the children to record their own voices into the cells so that they hear their own voice when using the cell to write with later. To do this: 1. In Edit Mode, right click (ctrl click) on the boy cell 2. Choose Properties and then select the Sound and Video tab 3. The top section of the window controls what will happen in a normal mouse click. The bottom section of the window controls what will happen with a right click (Ctrl click) We will record a voice to play instead of the computer voice when we right click so will focus on the bottom section. 4. Choose Play Recorded Sound or Video. 5. Click on the red record button to start recording. This will change to a black stop sign which you click when you are finished. This sound will now play with you right click on the cell.

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Clicker 5 Tutorial Labeling (Pop-up Grids) Open Clicker 5 or Click on the Explorer Folder and click on ‘Create New Grid Set’ under the green arrows.

Double click on Labeling in the list of templates that opens up and double click on Words Single. Then click the ‘Create’ button. You can use this template for many purposes such as vocabulary development where they have to pick the correct word to describe the picture or for spelling where children have to pick the option with the correct spelling. There are so many options. Add a picture to each of the larger cells. To do this: 1. In Edit Mode, click on the Pictures icon 2. Find pictures from either your own files or from the Crick library. 3. Hold down shift and drag them onto the cells. In this example, I have added different garden tools. Now click on the text line beneath the first picture. A pop-up bank of words will appear. You can now change to contents of each line in the pop-up box by Shift + Clicking on each one and adding words to match the pictures you chose. Tip It is faster to use tab to move between cells. You only need to do this once. All the other cells beneath the pictures are pre-programmed to also open this same pop-up grid.

If you want to have a different pop-up grid associated with each cell beneath the pictures such as when you want them to choose the correct spelling from a range options, then you choose Words Multiple instead of Words Single when selecting the labeling template. You will then need to click on each word cell and fill in a pop-up grid for each one. Note that I needed to remove the picture that Clicker automatically put in from the correct wood option in the pop-up grid so that the children couldn’t see which was the correct answer. To do this, I right clicked on the cell, choose properties and then clicked remove picture. Removing Cells from a pop-up grid. In the example above, I didn’t want as many cells as there were in the default pop-up grid. To remove a cell, right click on it and choose Delete. The pop-up grid will then have a blank area at the bottom. To remove this area (if you are a perfectionist) : 1. Right click (Ctrl click) on the blank area and choose Grid Properties. 2. Click on the General tab. 3. I changed the workspace area from 300 down to 200 which was about right. 4. You will notice that the pop-up window now no longer has a blank area under the last cell. Experimenting with Grid Properties As a very last exercise for this morning, try right clicking on the blue background of the main grid and having a look through all the options in the tabs. Note the way you can change the colour of the background or have a picture (another way to get a picture in the background is to open the Pictures icon in the Edit toolbar, find a picture and Shift + drag it onto the background area). You can also record vocals to be read when the grid opens or closes.

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