Exam days can be stressful – not just for students, but also for the staff supporting them. If your school uses DocsPlus for access arrangements (as a computer reader, scribe or word processor), a bit of advanced planning goes a long way in ensuring everything runs like clockwork.
Here’s how you can avoid a last-minute rush and make sure you’re tech-ready and confident on exam day.
Set up exam profiles in advance
Avoid the morning panic! Create and save user profiles for each student before exam day. These should reflect the exact level of support permitted during exams, which might differ from their normal classroom setup. The setup should reflect whether the student has qualified for exam access to a computer reader, scribe or word processor.
If a student uses DocsPlus regularly, you may already have subject-specific setups saved. These can be imported in seconds, saving precious time and reducing stress.
Remember: it’s the school’s responsibility to ensure accessibility tools and support settings used during the exam are in line with official guidelines. This means turning off or restricting any features that are not permitted (like the Predictor or the spell checker, depending on the candidate’s approved arrangement). For more guidance, see:
🗒️ JCQ access arrangements and reasonable adjustments
📖 SQA assessment arrangements guidance
Reduce invigilator stress
Make life easier for your invigilators by ensuring all digital arrangements are sorted in advance. If invigilators aren’t familiar with DocsPlus, they shouldn’t have to troubleshoot under pressure.
By having everything pre-configured (user profiles, exam papers, printer setup), the invigilator’s role is simply to open the correct file and supervise.
Share exam papers securely and efficiently
Our tech team recommend using a router and USB-connected NAS drive to distribute exam papers to multiple laptops simultaneously. This is especially useful if you're managing access to DocsPlus as a computer reader for large cohorts.
If setting up a router isn’t an option, you can manually transfer the exam papers using a USB stick – which would be more time-consuming for large cohorts but is still a reliable method.
Understand the backup process
DocsPlus automatically saves a backup every minute, which is reassuring. To avoid any unnecessary tech-worries, make sure laptops are charged, stable, and don’t run extra background programs.
Connect and test printers in advance
If you're printing directly from student laptops, which is very likely if your students are using computer readers, set up your wireless or USB-connected printers beforehand. A mini-router that connects devices to the printer can be a great asset.
(Don’t forget to complete the correct candidate and exam information).
Final thoughts
A smooth DocsPlus exam day is all about being proactive, not reactive. Set everything up ahead of time, test your systems, and have backups for your backups. When done right, DocsPlus can offer students the independence they need, enabling the use of tools like a computer reader, and give staff the confidence that all tech will work seamlessly on the big day.
Need help setting up DocsPlus for exams or have any questions?
🤝 Book a free exam support meeting with our friendly tech team!
❓ Read our Using DocsPlus in exams FAQs
Many of our customers purchase Flexi-subscriptions and want to find out the easiest way to install the software on numerous Windows devices.
We suggest using ‘Intune’ and following the steps below (you may want to pass these instructions on to your IT team or provider).
To install Clicker using Intune:
- Download the latest Clicker installer from Subscription Management.
- Run the downloaded file and click "Install" to start unpacking it.
- Close the Clicker Installer that auto-starts and extract "Clicker8-enGB.msi" from the MSI subfolder.
- In Intune, deploy the MSI as a "Line-of-Business" app.
- Specify these parameters (where PIDKEY = your serial number and SHAREDFILES = where you’d like Clicker to save documents):
/qn PIDKEY="XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX"
SHAREDFILES="C:\Users\Public\Documents\Clicker" - If you would prefer to use cloud storage, replace SHAREDFILES="C:\Users\Public\Documents\Clicker" with EXPLORER=”OneDrive”.
Possible values for EXPLORER are “OneDrive”, “Google Drive” and “DropBox”.
If you need any further help, please get in touch with our support team by filling in our support form, or you can call us on 01604 671691 and we’ll be very happy to assist you!
LearningGrids is one of Clicker’s most popular features – teachers love having instant access to a free library of curriculum resources – at the time of writing there are over 3000 available!
However, I am sometimes asked when training schools – “What if there aren’t any resources on my topic? Is it difficult to make your own?”
Well, the simple answer is ”No - it’s really easy!”
I was recently asked how Clicker could be used to support a Year 6 class studying Romeo and Juliet.
To start with, I’d suggest a class discussion on the character traits of Romeo and Juliet. Create a Clicker Board from one of the pre-made templates by selecting New Clicker Set > Planning Boards from the Quick Start screen in Clicker 8.
You can add your own pictures as a stimulus or even drag-and-drop images from search engines:
As a class group, discuss the character traits of Romeo and Juliet, filling in the cells on the Clicker Board:
Bridge the gap between planning and writing by transforming your mind map into a word bank - just click on the Export button and select ‘Create Word Bank’. Save this to your school’s cloud storage system (such as Google Drive) and it’s instantly accessible to support your class on their devices as they write!
I then searched the web for a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ synopsis – there are lots of websites that summarise the play for children in a few sentences:
I copied all the text and pasted it into Clicker (Clicker Set ribbon > New > Sentence Set). I added a couple of extra grids so I could split the longer sentences to simplify them and keep them under 12 words.
Choosing ‘View & Copy’ provides children with a model as they build their sentences.
You can use the exact same text to create an activity for your more confident writers – in the Clicker Set ribbon, select New > Word Bank, paste in the words, choose alphabetic grids, and filter out high frequency words.
And there you have it – accessible curriculum resources in a flash!
If you need a little help with creating your own Clicker Sets, take a look at these excellent short tutorials from our training team: Clicker 8 - Tutorials | Crick Software. For some one-to-one support from a Clicker Education Consultant, you can book a free Customer Care meeting here: Customer care meetings | Crick Software.
Recently, I was in conversation with the lead psychologist of a group of schools, who wanted to know how Clicker could help with metacognition.
“Put simply, metacognition is ‘thinking about thinking’. Some teachers also define it as ‘learning to learn’.”1
I thought it was an interesting concept to cover, so I’ll be taking you through how Clicker offers children lots of opportunities to work through their thought processes and ‘learn about learning’ – by planning, analysing, organising, and reflecting.
Clicker Board
Clicker Board is a great tool for organising and planning ideas – children can share their thought processes and engage in critical feedback from their peers or teacher. Children can use ready-made storyboards to plan out a story or a recount of an experience or event, either with written notes or verbally with Voice Notes. Even better – get them to collaborate on these kinds of planning tasks so they are experiencing and benefitting from peer-to-peer learning.
K-W-L charts
K-W-L charts help to engage learners in a new topic, activate their prior knowledge and support them in monitoring their learning. Use the Clicker K-W-L template to support research on any topic, in any curriculum area. It could also be used when starting a new book or chapter to encourage more engagement with the reading. Or how about using it before and after going on a field trip to ensure that pupils are focused and make the most out of the educational visit?
We also have a great selection of social and emotional learning sets to support the areas of self-awareness, self-management and decision-making. Use the Daily Reflection Talk Set to record an achievement and challenging event for each day.
Our Rose, Thorn, Bud activities help children to identify and reflect on positive moments (roses), areas they found challenging (thorns), and new ideas (buds). Introduce our Decisions – Pros and Cons and Decision-Making Planner to help learners organise their thoughts and resolve difficult issues. And of course, it’s easy to edit these resources or even create your own metacognition activities.
If there’s a specific topic or skillset you’d like some support with, click here for a free demo with one of our education consultants and find out how Clicker can help.
1 https://www.educare.co.uk/news/what-is-metacognition
In today’s connected society, being able to share files quickly and easily is important.
As a result, more schools are adopting the use of cloud storage like OneDrive and Google Drive. These services enable you to store your files online, so you can access them from different devices, and share them with other users.
Having listened to customer feedback, we’ve now made it easier to access your cloud storage within Clicker 8 and DocsPlus.
The “Home” location
Until now, the Shared Files location has been the default when opening / saving. Depending on your installation, this points to a certain folder on your computer or your network. It can only be changed by your IT Support.
In the latest version of Clicker 8 and DocsPlus, this has been renamed Home and can be changed whenever you like.
If you have any of the following cloud storage accounts installed on your computer, you can easily set it as the default Home location:
- iCloud (Mac)
- Dropbox
- Google Drive
- OneDrive
Alternatively, if you want easy access to your cloud storage without it being the default, you can add it as an Additional location.
For full instructions on setting up Home, and sharing files across all platforms, please use our file sharing guide:
Contact Support
Our Support team is always happy to help if you have any technical questions or difficulties getting set up with our software. You can reach us by email at support@cricksoft.com, by phone at 01604 671691, or by completing this short form.