Tardy students and student pranks

[tefel]

Hi all,
I'm wondering how other teachers handle this situation:

I've started the class, and taken the time to get named voting up and working. Just then, a student walks in late. If I want the late-comer to be able to vote, what do I do?

Do I have to re-allocate all the devices?
Can I just add the late student to the users list and have him or her punch in the 3-letter code?

Also, I'm having trouble with some voters not working, apparently at random. They appear to work normally during the allocation process, but then stop working when voting starts. It's usually two or three that behave this way. I've read on another thread that this might be caused by marking students absent. I will experiment with that tomorrow. But until then, I'm wondering if anyone else has some suggestions about how to trouble shoot this problem. (Yes, I'm pretty sure I have the latest driver and software).

These last few days, I have been assuming that the problem was being caused by students playing pranks on each other---punching in someone else's three letter code, for example. I thought this might explain why sometimes a student will punch in the three letters, their name will turn to green, like it's supposed to, but then for some mysterious reason their name switches back to red.

Which brings me to my last question: Does anyone else know what pranks/mischief students may be doing to confuse the voters and cause them to work or not work? At the moment, I'm really not sure if it's my students that are causing the problem, or if I've got a glitch somewhere. The students are quick to blame each other when their voter suddenly stops working---so I've thought it might be pranks, but now I'm having my doubts. Of course, no student has admitted to "turning off" another student's device.

Anyway, any advice along these lines would be greatly appreciated.
Tefel

[Lee Nelson]

PIN naming can only be done once. If a student walks in late you can add in a new device but you can't PIN register it as this would require all students to PIN register.

One way around this is to PIN register some votes yourself in case someone turns up late. Another way is to use the named class lists in which you can mark a student absent if they are not there, then add them in again if they turn up. This method does require that the devices are numbered and the students get the correct one for their name so this might not suit your set-up.

Regarding the votes not working there was an issue with marking students absent causing other votes to not work but this was specifically for the 2.4GHz system (I don't know whether you have this system or the older one). Also, I think you are not in the mode where you can mark students absent. Otherwise, I think you will need try to reproduce the problem then get on to technical support and explain exactly what happened.

If a student enters their PIN for named registration and it turns green, then subsequently goes red again, then it does sound like your students are entering someone else's PIN. You could call their bluff by using the class list mode mentioned above then they would not need to PIN register, but you would need to give out the correct devices to the correct students.

[tefel]

Thank you. I'll do some more experimenting today to try to pinpoint the problem.