CONWAY — Having been brought in from recess early just so a visitor can take some photos of the new classroom iPads, St. Joseph School first-grader Vincent Pham feels entitled to an explanation.
“I’m writing a story for the newspaper,” the visitor said. Vincent furrowed his brow.
“What’s a newspaper?” the Conway student asked.
The march of technology into diocesan classrooms is definitely well under way. Computer labs are a fixture in Catholic schools, and some have been able to transition to laptops for teachers. Now, a growing number of schools are going even further by introducing wireless computing for teachers and students. It’s not yet paperless, but it is changing the way classrooms operate.
“Students are still using textbooks but instead of always using paper and pencil on projects, now they’re able to create things on the Internet or on the computer and share it with their teachers,” said Lindsey Thompson, fifth-grade teacher and a member of the school’s technology steering committee. “They can even go home and show their parents.”
According to an informal survey of the diocese’s 28 schools, nine reported they were now using iPads or tablets with their students.
St. Joseph School in Conway rolled out arguably the most ambitious program in the diocese this year. The school invested in three “carts” or sets of wireless hardware, shared among several classrooms. Elementary students use 28 iPads, while middle schoolers and high school students use 68 Chromebooks, a laptop device that saves work to the cloud instead of a hard drive. Each teacher was also given their choice of either device.
In addition to the hardware, St. Joseph invested in upping its wireless digital capacity last spring to handle the extra traffic. And, it implemented a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy allowing students the option to work off their own tablet, laptop or smartphone.
“That’s the beautiful thing about Google and the whole Google Drive concept,” said Matt Tucker, elementary principal. “You don’t have to have a Chromebook to access your account. You can have any desktop, any laptop, as long as you have your account. So, if a kid said they forgot their project, the teacher can pull it up on their laptop and print it.”
A number of other Catholic schools are taking similar steps. In Hot Springs, St. John School’s teachers received iPad Minis in May, which sync with 40 iPads the school bought for student use, as well as other classroom technology such as projectors.
Immaculate Conception School in North Little Rock bought 40 iPads for faculty and has an ambitious long-range goal of providing individual devices for every student, a goal shared by Christ the King School in Fort Smith. There, the administration is raising money now to buy 40 iPads for sixth-graders this December.
St. Boniface School in Fort Smith recently added 17 tablets for use by kindergarten through second grade and doubled the number for the upper grades to 16. Nearby Trinity Junior High School’s teachers use laptops, accentuated by a new BYOD policy, which allows students to use their own devices in the classroom.
At Subiaco Academy eighth-graders in August were given iPad Minis loaded with four of their textbooks as part of its pilot project. A school-wide plan is expected for 2014.
Sacred Heart School in Morrilton now has 24 Microsoft Surface tablets. Technically, these devices are for kindergarten through sixth grade but are available to the whole school to check out and use. Even tiny St. Mary School in Paragould has gotten in on the act, with 10 iPads and a printer for fifth- and sixth-graders.
The challenges of stepping into this technology begin with funding — schools have invested from $5,500 in Paragould to around $60,000 at Conway. Technology budgets generally don’t extend that far, so private donations and school fundraisers for new computers are the norm.
“Technology is not cheap,” said Kathleen Benites, media specialist at Immaculate Conception in North Little Rock. “These aren’t toys; they have to be viewed as augmenting the educational process.”
Benites said other details from who will configure and maintain the devices to staff training also cannot be overlooked. As the one tasked with maintaining the equipment and updating apps, she’s attended workshops in her area of specialty to stay current. Several other schools have either hosted staff technology training or sent their teachers to conferences to learn how to maximize the devices.
This learning is reinforced through such things as Trinity Junior High’s “Technology Thursday,” which sets aside time for teachers to develop their digital lesson plans. St. Joseph School in Conway gives teachers the opportunity to attend in-house technology meetings to share best practices and collectively problem-solve.
While this all helps, teachers and administrators universally agree that the most help in mastering the devices or discovering new ways to use content comes from the students themselves.
“The kids are very good about saying, ‘Oh, you can do this and you can do this,’” said Teresa McKay, Paragould teacher. “They’re very comfortable with the technology while this is my first time dealing with it. It’s a great to see that level of engagement and for them to teach each other and me. But I still have to tell them to keep it simple; they’re supposed to keep up with me not the other way around.”
