Many of you have been interested in the "polls" I began using in the classroom earlier this week, which uses students' everyday technology and transforms it into teaching tools. Yesterday in class, I utilized some more polls powered by Poll Everywhere to kick start off our conversation in class. The technology lets students answer polls through their cell phones or computers to see "live" results on the screen in the classroom. It is the tail end of the semester, and students are pretty exhausted (so are professors!). In addition to serving some pedagogical needs, using technology in class livened up the students so that they relaxed and were able to further engage in the conversation. We were talking about the Gospel of John, so my questions were geared towards their reading on this Gospel.
My first question yesterday: "Do you like taking polls in class?" (It let everyone practice using text message feature of their phones for the polls). Overwhelming answer: Yes.
Second question: "How long did Jesus preach and teach?" This was multiple choice, so students could answer "1 year", "3 years" or "no idea". Of course, the very alert students asked "in which Gospel?" Excellent---after the answers rolled in, we got the chance to talk about how the chronology in the Gospel of John is different than the Synoptics. I followed this up with the verbal question "How old was Jesus when he died"? Nearly everyone said "33", so that gave us the opportunity to talk about how our cultural view of Jesus very much looks to this Gospel. I felt that this question was important because there was no right or wrong---I simply asked students to answer what they thought from their experience of knowing about the Bible in culture, or from their reading.
Third question: "What is missing in the Gospel of John compared to the Synoptics?" This was multiple choice, so students could answer "Baptism", "Last Supper/Communion", "Parables" or "All of the Above". Students answered in a range (there was no majority answer), and the good news is that they were all correct. I have structured these questions so that they enable students to learn, not to fail. We talked about each answer and compared the Gospel of John to the Synoptics.
The final question: "What is the inaugural story of Jesus in the Gospel of John?" This question related directly to their reading of the Gospel and of their textbook (which uses the language "inaugural story"), and 80% of students got it right. Their choices were "thrown (almost) off of a cliff", "water into wine", or "Sermon on the Mount". The correct answer is "water into wine" which gave us the opportunity to talk about their textbook's interpretation of the story. The other answers were all ones we had talked about in class, so we went over the answers and reinforced what the students had learned in previous weeks.
Did students learn more in this method? While I'm not sure they learned more, they did learn differently. Most of all, they connected their learning (and reviewing) with an everyday activity that they enjoy. This gave us the opportunity to review material, connect an overall portrait of the Gospels and their relationship (or non-relationship) to one another, and explore how Jesus in the Gospel of John is a little bit different than the other Gospels.
I do believe that it is valuable for students to unplug once in a while; I envision using such technology for pointed lessons, perhaps several times a month in a deliberate way. Will students begin texting their friends? Possibly, and that is an element of using technology like this in the classroom in which the professor cannot maintain control. (Gulp!) But I am confident that students learn anyway! Excessive texting, of course, needs to be addressed. I keep my classes moving forward so that students are in dialogue, answering questions, working in groups, and taking notes, so really, there is not a lot of time for texting.
What do you think? Have you used technology like this in the classroom? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Again, many thanks to Dr. Erica Martin for introducing this concept to me!