Fr.+Joe+Hannon+Article

Fr. Joe Hannon, St. Petersburg Catholic High School

jhannon@spchs.org

Article Title: **Educational Use of Cell Phones in the Religion Classroom**


 * Cell Phones and Classrooms **

In the Fall of 2012, our school administration began a formal process that would, over time, prepare our faculty for the introduction and use of iPads for every student. Early on in our program for faculty preparation, Sr. Caroline Cerveny of Interactive Connections gave a presentation to our faculty that gave an overview of the range of new digital technologies that support the faith and educational development of teens. The majority of what Sr. Cerveny talked about was new to me. Also, our faculty began to have regular updates in training sessions aimed at helping us prepare for the use of more advanced technology in the classroom. I began to learn about iPad use and also to learn about other common technologies, such as student’s cell phones, that would be appropriate for the classroom. I found a number of [|general articles] that gave overviews of what was possible and easy to do with the technology teens have on hand or in their school bags. I came to the conclusion that learning how to make use of student cell phones to support classroom learning was an excellent place to jump in and get my feet wet.

St. Petersburg Catholic High School (SPCHS) has a very clear and public policy on the use of cell phones during school hours. Students can have on their person cell phones but cannot use them during school hours. Devices are required to be turned off during school hours and if they are used, turned on, heard or seen during school hours, they are confiscated by teachers or staff and given to the Dean of Students. Redemption costs ten dollars and for a third offense the phone is held till the end of the semester and the student faces suspension in school or at home. On the face of it, it would seem that cell phones and an educational environment are not compatible. However the [|ISTE Standards for Students] clearly envisions students learning how to use new technologies, such as cell phones, for productive use in the classroom. The standards also make it clear that the learning environment for both individuals and the class group can be enhanced by appropriated use of new technologies.

My project’s goal was to specify a Web 2.0 based educational use for cell phones in the eleventh grade (Junior) religious education classroom at St. Petersburg Catholic High School. The educational use I focused on was that of responding to quiz questions posted on the classroom screen via the teachers computer and with each respondent getting feedback in terms of a correct choice or not and also the entire class receiving a visual overview of how the entire class responded on a particular question. This type of service is known as online polling. I considered two such services: [|Socrative] and [|Poll Everywhere].

My goal stayed within the parameters for “free usage” of the two different platforms I looked at and considered for use in completing this project. To have graded responses per student, as for a traditional quiz for academic credit, would have required a yearly subscription rate for the teacher.

As I was comparing the two platforms to use for quiz taking as described above, I was also clarifying with the school administration the parameters for educational use of cell phones in the classroom and I was checking with our school’s IT office to make sure that what I was attempting to do was already supported by our IT system.


 * Preparation for Guided Cell Phone Use in the Classroom **

In mid-October 2013, I began researching a range of applications that were developed specifically for the use of cell phones or other devices in taking classroom quizzes, surveys, and open ended response to teacher questions. Early on I honed in on Poll Everywhere and Socrative Teacher and Student Clicker. Both of these provided basically the same support for a range of types of quizzes (multiple choice, true and false, open ended) and responses (seen only by the student responding or seen by the whole class) in a classroom environment. Both provided free of charge the basic services needed to take a quiz and to have the results of correct or incorrect answers available to each student on their cell phone and to have available for viewing on the classroom screen the results of the class as a whole for each question asked.

I enrolled in both Poll Everywhere and Socrative and experimented with making and taking quizzes. I felt that Poll Everywhere was simpler to use and so I chose that application for use. I then began to make a number of quizzes that could be used as review work for my classroom sections.

On November 5, 2013 I met with our Vice Principal for Academics and discussed the use of cell phones and Web 2.0 applications for classroom use of quizzes, surveys, and response to open ended questions through the use of cell phones. This guided and professional use of students’ cell phones was completely endorsed and supported by our administration. On the same day I met with our school’s IT person and it became clear that our current computer support system was adequate for the use I was proposing.


 * Cell Phone Use in the Religious Education Classroom **

In mid November, I began a general preparation for use of the cell phone for review quizzes. I gave a general explanation to each of my five classes of how Poll Everywhere works and how we could use it for reviewing our content in preparation for a weekly quiz. Students were very interested and receptive and wanted to try this experiment. From one of my classes I drew a small group to meet with and learn of their experiences in using cell phones in the classroom in middle school or at our high school. Very few had any experience at all with educational use of cell phones. None had such an experience in our high school.

A week later, I began my five daily religion classes by asking students to please take out their cell phones and leave them on top of their desk. I then used a short slide presentation to show them how Poll Everywhere enables them to respond to review questions. The mechanics of using text messaging to respond to each question were very simple and the students needed no additional instructions. After this simple introduction, we proceeded to go through each review question. Some questions were true and false and some were multiple choice. Each student received feedback as to the correctness of their responses and our class results were displayed as the answerers were texted in and recorded as correct or incorrect.

By mid-morning, classes entered the room and began asking if they could take the review quiz! The answer, of course, was “Yes, and here’s how we do it.”


 * Next Steps **

During the second semester, our faculty will be actively working on preparation for the introduction of iPads for each student starting in the Fall Semester of 2014. I will be considering moving to the first level of a paid subscription to Poll Everywhere that provides these support systems: grading per student per quiz, use for attendance taking, advanced reporting of results on spread sheets, response moderation for open ended response questions, and support for embedding quizzes and response questions into Power Point slides. I see each one of these as helpful in the learning environment.

I shared the results of this project at our December 2013 Religion Department meeting. My colleagues were very interested and voiced interest in making use of the “free” program from either Poll Everywhere or Socrative in the second semester. The end result of this may be a request for a school wide subscription for this type of Web support for our learning environment in the digital classroom setting.

This was a great experience for me and an eye-opener! It’s one thing to read about how appropriate use of technology can energize young people to learn, and it’s another thing to be part of it and watch it unfold. In many ways, this small step forward crystalized for me what the DDBC Summer Session had enabled me to do – to move from reading about the digital revolution to jumping in and getting my feet wet!