You may find that some of your students have not properly registered their clicker licenses (AKA Subscriptions) and others may not have successfully made an account at all with Turning.
An easy way for you to reach out to these students is to use the new email feature in TurningPoint. To do this, launch the software, and go to the Manage tab. Then, select your course on the left panel so it is highlighted.
On the top right, there will be a little envelope icon. Click that, and it will give you options to reach out to your students. Do not check the Clicker ID box as students using mobile devices will get a message telling them they need to add a clicker ID. But, do check the Subscription and Create Account boxes and then click Send. Students who need to just add a subscription will get instructions to do so, and students who need to create an account will get the appropriate instructions as well.
I have written about this before, but the clicker looks different, so I thought it was worth going over again.
There are two different ways that a student can use a clicker to send information to the instructor. The first is the normal use of the clicker in the classroom… the poll response. When a student uses this, the screen looks like this,
And when the student answers, they get a confirmation that the answer was received, and as long as the poll was given some grade, they may also get points in their blackboard grade book.
The second thing that students can send with their clickers are Messages. The student enters into this mode by pressing the wrench button on the clicker,
and then sending the message
The student also gets a happy confirmation that this has been sent.. and messages can only be sent when the polls are open. But there are no grades or points associated with this activity, and if they believe they have answered a poll, they will get a zero.
As the instructor, you can check to see if this is happening in your class by opening the TurningPoint 8 software, go to the Manage tab, select a session file and click on Reports.
If you, like me get this error – ignore it
just click ok
and use the pulldown to select the report type Session Log
If you see entries that look like:
“Doe, John (8D5678) sent a message to the presenter: D”
You have students that think they are answering polls, but are really sending messages. If you see things like:
“Doe, John (8D5678) sent a message to the presenter: Can you talk more about Mitosis?”
You have students who are sending messages, thinking you will see them and respond.
If you would like to see messages during class – you can.
You can click on the button as seen above that looks like a comic dialog bubble.. and that brings up a chat area that looks like this:
I hope this helps, and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to either TLT @ email@example.com or Turning Technologies at firstname.lastname@example.org
Right now – SBU is using Turning Point Cloud for clickers in our classrooms. As of tomorrow (May 31st), Turning Technologies will be releasing a new version of the software called Turning Point 8. It will show up as a download from your instructor user account through Turning Technologies:
Turning Point 8 is NOT backwards compatible. Any assessment and quizzes made with Turning Point 8 will NOT work in our classrooms and lecture halls. (See above in the screen shot where it says “Before you download, please check with your institution…”)
The new version also will not be compatible with loading grades into blackboard until we decide to switch to the new version… so even if you only teach with your own laptop, you will not want to use anything but Turning Point Cloud at this time.
Turning Technologies released an update today for TurningPoint Cloud to support Microsoft Office 2016 Mac v15.25. Clients with this version of Microsoft Office were experiencing issues with TurningPoint’s PowerPoint Polling environment. This update resolves the previous issues to allow for a seamless experience with PowerPoint Polling.
To download the latest version, open TurningPoint Cloud and sign in. Click the TurningPoint logo at the bottom of the dashboard. In the popup window, click Check For Updates and click Install Update.
We thank you for your patience.
Please review full documentation for more information.
In an attempt for uniformity and appropriate faculty support of technologies, as well as saving our students the expense of being required to use multiple response systems; I am reminding everyone that Turning Technologies is the supported classroom student response system. What the students purchase can be used in both face to face and online responses; as well as at the instructor’s discretion, with a physical clicker or a virtual one.
Other companies that may come call or come onto campus are not supported. Namely Top Hat.
We re-evaluate the provider that we choose to use every few years as technology changes and evolves.
Turning Technologies will last a few more seasons, but Fall 2014 will be the year when they jumped the shark. It’s too close to the advent of newer methods of student responses for such a large hiccup. Really a shame they couldn’t have gone out more peacefully.
I’m happy to say that it is supposed to work much better this spring. (Installing the new version on my computer as we speak.) You can check to see if you have the newest version by opening up your application, then clicking on the TurningPoint Cloud logo at the bottom on the screen. A window will appear and one of the buttons is Check for Updates.
Before you even answer a poll in class… how many icons are on your screen? Does it look like this?
It shouldn’t. This is the Send Message mode. Theoretically it is for asking the instructor questions during polling – but no one uses it really, and the messages you send go into a weird report that they never really have a reason to look at, so they won’t be seen.
It should look like this:
To get out of Send Message mode… you must hit that back arrow in the lower left corner.
The text passage provides instructions and information about using TurningPoint software for clicker-based classroom interactions, including how to manage student subscriptions, send emails, and troubleshoot common issues. It does not contain any mathematical questions or answers.
no_question
Given a text passage, determine:
    1. If it contains a mathematical question (including word problems or calculations)
    2. If an answer to that mathematical question is provided in the text

First, describe the content structure you found in 1-2 sentences.

Then provide your analysis in the following format:
TYPE: <one of the following values>
- NO_QUESTION
- SINGLE_QUESTION
- SINGLE_QUESTION_WITH_ANSWER
- MULTIPLE_QUESTIONS
- MULTIPLE_QUESTIONS_WITH_ANSWERS
system
You may find that some of your students have not properly registered their clicker licenses (AKA Subscriptions) and others may not have successfully made an account at all with Turning.
An easy way for you to reach out to these students is to use the new email feature in TurningPoint. To do this, launch the software, and go to the Manage tab. Then, select your course on the left panel so it is highlighted.
On the top right, there will be a little envelope icon. Click that, and it will give you options to reach out to your students. Do not check the Clicker ID box as students using mobile devices will get a message telling them they need to add a clicker ID. But, do check the Subscription and Create Account boxes and then click Send. Students who need to just add a subscription will get instructions to do so, and students who need to create an account will get the appropriate instructions as well.
I have written about this before, but the clicker looks different, so I thought it was worth going over again.
There are two different ways that a student can use a clicker to send information to the instructor. The first is the normal use of the clicker in the classroom… the poll response. When a student uses this, the screen looks like this,
And when the student answers, they get a confirmation that the answer was received, and as long as the poll was given some grade, they may also get points in their blackboard grade book.
The second thing that students can send with their clickers are Messages. The student enters into this mode by pressing the wrench button on the clicker,
and then sending the message
The student also gets a happy confirmation that this has been sent.. and messages can only be sent when the polls are open. But there are no grades or points associated with this activity, and if they believe they have answered a poll, they will get a zero.
As the instructor, you can check to see if this is happening in your class by opening the TurningPoint 8 software, go to the Manage tab, select a session file and click on Reports.
If you, like me get this error – ignore it
just click ok
and use the pulldown to select the report type Session Log
If you see entries that look like:
“Doe, John (8D5678) sent a message to the presenter: D”
You have students that think they are answering polls, but are really sending messages. If you see things like:
“Doe, John (8D5678) sent a message to the presenter: Can you talk more about Mitosis?”
You have students who are sending messages, thinking you will see them and respond.
If you would like to see messages during class – you can.
You can click on the button as seen above that looks like a comic dialog bubble.. and that brings up a chat area that looks like this:
I hope this helps, and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to either TLT @ email@example.com or Turning Technologies at firstname.lastname@example.org
Right now – SBU is using Turning Point Cloud for clickers in our classrooms. As of tomorrow (May 31st), Turning Technologies will be releasing a new version of the software called Turning Point 8. It will show up as a download from your instructor user account through Turning Technologies:
Turning Point 8 is NOT backwards compatible. Any assessment and quizzes made with Turning Point 8 will NOT work in our classrooms and lecture halls. (See above in the screen shot where it says “Before you download, please check with your institution…”)
The new version also will not be compatible with loading grades into blackboard until we decide to switch to the new version… so even if you only teach with your own laptop, you will not want to use anything but Turning Point Cloud at this time.
Turning Technologies released an update today for TurningPoint Cloud to support Microsoft Office 2016 Mac v15.25. Clients with this version of Microsoft Office were experiencing issues with TurningPoint’s PowerPoint Polling environment. This update resolves the previous issues to allow for a seamless experience with PowerPoint Polling.
To download the latest version, open TurningPoint Cloud and sign in. Click the TurningPoint logo at the bottom of the dashboard. In the popup window, click Check For Updates and click Install Update.
We thank you for your patience.
Please review full documentation for more information.
In an attempt for uniformity and appropriate faculty support of technologies, as well as saving our students the expense of being required to use multiple response systems; I am reminding everyone that Turning Technologies is the supported classroom student response system. What the students purchase can be used in both face to face and online responses; as well as at the instructor’s discretion, with a physical clicker or a virtual one.
Other companies that may come call or come onto campus are not supported. Namely Top Hat.
We re-evaluate the provider that we choose to use every few years as technology changes and evolves.
Turning Technologies will last a few more seasons, but Fall 2014 will be the year when they jumped the shark. It’s too close to the advent of newer methods of student responses for such a large hiccup. Really a shame they couldn’t have gone out more peacefully.
I’m happy to say that it is supposed to work much better this spring. (Installing the new version on my computer as we speak.) You can check to see if you have the newest version by opening up your application, then clicking on the TurningPoint Cloud logo at the bottom on the screen. A window will appear and one of the buttons is Check for Updates.
Before you even answer a poll in class… how many icons are on your screen? Does it look like this?
It shouldn’t. This is the Send Message mode. Theoretically it is for asking the instructor questions during polling – but no one uses it really, and the messages you send go into a weird report that they never really have a reason to look at, so they won’t be seen.
It should look like this:
To get out of Send Message mode… you must hit that back arrow in the lower left corner.
user
The text passage provides instructions and information about using TurningPoint software for clicker-based classroom interactions, including how to manage student subscriptions, send emails, and troubleshoot common issues. It does not contain any mathematical questions or answers.

TYPE: NO_QUESTION