This year marks a huge milestone for Clicker – 30 years of supporting children’s learning and making a difference in classrooms around the world.

To honour this incredible journey, we’ve created a special video that celebrates Clicker’s impact, featuring the inspiring origin story and reflections from founders John and Ann Crick.

Creating this video has been especially poignant, as it was filmed just weeks before the unexpected death of Ann Crick. Ann was a pioneering advocate for inclusion, dedicated to giving every child a voice and the chance to succeed alongside their peers. Her work at Crick has transformed countless lives, and her legacy will continue to inspire us.

In memory of Ann and her passion for supporting young people, we’re making donations to the Youth Hostel Association, a cause very close to her heart. If you’d like to join us in honouring her memory, you can donate here:

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this journey with Clicker – together, let’s continue building a more inclusive, accessible future for all children.

We’re extremely pleased to announce that Clicker is a Bett Awards finalist in the ‘Primary – Digital Learning Product – Literacy and Language’ category.

The Bett Awards are a global celebration of the inspiring creativity and innovation that can be found throughout technology for education. This is the first year that Bett have included a literacy and language category, so we are very excited to be on the shortlist.

Over the years, Clicker has won nine Bett Awards – we really hope that this will be our chance to get into double figures. Last year, our founders John and Ann Crick were the proud recipients of Bett’s ‘Outstanding Achievement Award’.

Having been at the forefront of inclusive software development for more than a quarter of a century, John and Ann continue to help new generations of learners to experience feelings of pride and success in their writing. Their commitment to universal design and helping every child become a better, more confident writer has empowered young writers in thousands of schools around the world.  

The winner for the ‘Primary – Digital Learning Product – Literacy and Language’ category will be announced during the Bett Show in March, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed until then!

We’re excited to announce the launch of Clicker Talk, the newest member of the Clicker Apps family - perfect for boosting pupils’ speaking and listening skills across the curriculum.

Talk Sets are a popular feature of Clicker, giving children the opportunity to explore new vocabulary, demonstrate their knowledge, and rehearse their ideas for writing. They are also a great way for teachers to collect evidence of pupils’ speaking and listening attainment. Clicker Talk brings this powerful resource to iPads and Chromebooks too!

Listen and Say activities enable younger learners and emergent English speakers to familiarise themselves with core vocabulary.

Talk About sets are simple, open-ended activities that offer children an alternative way to demonstrate their understanding of key topics and concepts.

Tell the Story activities give children an opportunity to orally retell stories, explore a sequence of events or recount a process in manageable steps.

You can create your own Talk Sets in a flash or dip into our ready-made resources, which cover a wide range of curriculum topics. From talking about the phases of the moon, to exploring how children are feeling in a daily reflection, to retelling Jack and the Beanstalk, there’s something for all ages, subjects and abilities on LearningGrids.

Free access for current subscribers

Clicker Talk is completely free to access for our current Clicker subscribers – you can install Clicker Talk on any device that you currently have Clicker Writer/Clicker Books on without using up any additional Clicker licenses.

These easy-to-follow support guides will help you get started:

Don’t have Clicker yet?

If you would like to explore how Clicker can raise literacy attainment and enjoyment across your school, we offer a free discovery calls where we’ll discuss your pupils’ specific learning challenges and objectives, and how Clicker can help.

You can choose the date and time that works best for you here.

We’ve also got lots more information about Clicker Talk and the complete Clicker package on our website.

The annual Bett Awards are the ‘Oscars’ of the EdTech industry, bringing together innovative and practical educational technology solutions from industry experts across the globe. We are thrilled to announce that the recipients of this year’s Outstanding Achievement Award were our very own John and Ann Crick!

“It’s a massive honour to receive the Bett Outstanding Achievement Award – a very big thank you to everyone involved in the decision. A lot has changed since starting in our back bedroom 29 years ago, but the continuous improvement of our products continues with the same passion as ever.

Our talented and dedicated team at Crick, together with the support and suggestions from the worldwide Clicker community play a central role in the ongoing story of Crick Software. Day after day, teachers everywhere are helping pupils of all abilities to reach their full potential, and we’re very proud to be a part of that.”

The idea for Clicker came to John in the early 1990s when he was working in a special school for children with physical disabilities. These new things called ‘computers’ had begun to appear! It was an exciting time; getting children connected up with trackballs and switches, creating new output opportunities for them. He wanted to get them progressing with their literacy and language development, but there wasn’t anything around that could give kids access to writing, and it would be far too arduous to do this letter by letter with switches.

He started formulating an idea… wouldn’t it be great if you could have a grid with words that would go into a word processor when you selected them, that was scannable, and that the teacher could instantly tailor without having to use a complicated editor. Twelve months of hard work and 2am programming sessions later, Clicker was born!

When John started testing Clicker, his wife Ann, a primary school teacher, saw what he was doing, clicking on words and sending them into the word processor, listening to them speak etc., and thought that this would be a fantastic tool for the kids she was working with, to help them with their writing. This was the light-bulb moment… they realised that they had something that wasn’t just a specialist tool for switch-users, as important as that function is, but something that could help every child become a better, more confident writer. In a sense, they stumbled upon universal design by accident before it even became part of our terminology!

Twenty-nine years, 8 versions, 10 language translations and 19 major awards later, Clicker is supporting and empowering young writers in thousands of schools around the world.

"For me, it’s one of the most inclusive pieces of software there is.”
- John Galloway, Advisory Teacher for ICT, SEN and Inclusion

“I’ve been using Crick Software’s Clicker program since iteration 4, so have had the opportunity to follow its development over 20+ years. Every time a major update is released, I am quite simply blown away by the improvements. I am definitely one of Crick’s biggest fans!”
- Claire Barnes, Willow Dene School

“Clicker has transformed my life as an SEN Teacher.”
- Lucy McGee, St Hugh’s Primary School

“I would say it’s the gold standard piece of software to support reading and writing for any age, primary, secondary, higher education.”
- Carol Allen, ICT and Inclusion specialist

John and Ann have been at the forefront of inclusive software development for more than a quarter of a century, helping new generations of learners to experience those same feelings of pride and success. Their commitment to universal design and inclusion is evident in every iteration of their software. Undoubtedly an outstanding achievement!

We recently received a wonderful Clicker success story from Marianne Baird who is the Assistant Headteacher and SENCo at Sunny Bank Primary School.

She decided to invest after hearing how successful it’s been for pupils in other schools.

Sunny Bank use Clicker in lots of innovative ways to help their SEN learners and Marianne wanted to share with us the transformative results, including a big boost in confidence, improvements in social and emotional wellbeing, and major barriers to writing being broken down.

“The word banks are definitely one of our favourite features of Clicker. We like that we can provide children with access to higher level vocabulary that’s perhaps out of their normal skill set. We’re also trying to broaden the kind of activities children are exposed to with Clicker. For example, we use the different Clicker Sets for sentence openers and closing activities, and for the lower ability children we look at phonemes and graphemes to help them with the middle and end sounds in words.

One of our year 6 pupils has really benefitted from Clicker. They have some social and emotional difficulties, particularly linked to lockdown, and we found that when this pupil returned to school, they were quite often leaving the classroom – and writing was a trigger for it.

We discovered they had lost a lot of confidence because they hadn’t practised their handwriting and even their writing stamina had decreased, but once they started using Clicker, they started to see themselves as a writer again.

This pupil went from refusing to write to re-engaging with the curriculum, producing five or six sentences during their lessons and showing a great deal of pride in their work, because they had that alternative method to record their ideas with Clicker.

For me, the best thing about Clicker is that it boosts children’s confidence and allows them to see themselves as writers.”

To read the full story, click here.

Dictation (speech-to-text) is a helpful tool that allows learners to get their ideas onto paper quickly. It can help them write content such as documents, essays, and emails by using voice narration, rather than physically typing them out. Many platforms have powerful, built-in dictation features which can be used in Clicker / DocsPlus.

Windows dictation

To initiate Windows dictation, click inside the Document (or any other text field) and press the Windows logo + H keys together on your physical keyboard. Alternatively, if you are using the Windows on-screen keyboard, click the Microphone key.

If it’s your first-time using Windows dictation, you will be asked to enable it in your Settings app first.

You should then see a box appear that turns from Initializing… to Listening…, meaning you are ready to start narrating your text. To stop, press Windows logo + H again, click the dictation icon, or wait 10 seconds.

For more information on Windows dictation, please see Microsoft’s support article.

Mac dictation

To enable Mac dictation, click the top-left Apple menu and go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation to switch dictation to On.

To initiate Mac dictation, click inside the Document in Clicker 8 / DocsPlus, and then press the Control key twice. To stop, press Control twice again, or click Done.

For more information on Mac dictation, please see Apple’s support article.

iPad dictation

To initiate iPad dictation within Clicker Writer / DocsPlus, tap the green Keyboard tool to switch to the on-screen keyboard and then tap the Dictate (microphone) key.

If this is the first time you are using dictation in the app, tap OK on the following two prompts to give the app permission to use your microphone for dictating text.

For more information on how you can control the access apps have to your iPad’s hardware features, please see Apple’s support article.

Chromebook dictation

While Chromebooks do have a dictation feature, it’s not currently possible to use this within Clicker Writer / DocsPlus. Our developers are hard at work to implement this in a free update, which will be coming soon.

If you need any assistance with dictation in Clicker / DocsPlus, or any element of our software, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@cricksoft.com, by filling in this short form or calling us on 01604 671691.

Last year we announced that we were successful in attaining the Investors in the Environment Bronze accreditation. For our continued commitment to sustainability over the past year, we have been awarded with the Silver award.

The Investors in the Environment noted several areas where we had made significant improvements from the previous year. This included a reduction in our electricity usage of 30%, of our gas usage and waste paper by 17% and 16% respectively, as well as a huge reduction in our waste production of 74% thanks in part to the recycling efforts that we implemented last year.

Going forwards, the iiE highlighted a few things that we can do to improve even further, including wider staff engagement and moving to a renewable energy tariff. We also intend to actively monitor our staff travel, as we know that this is a big part of our carbon footprint, and investigate ways to reduce it.

We’re very proud that all our staff members took an active role in contributing to this exceptional result and are aiming to achieve the ‘Green’ accreditation next year.