{"id":2941,"date":"2015-06-03T14:13:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T20:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/?p=2941"},"modified":"2015-06-03T14:13:46","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T20:13:46","slug":"byod-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/2015\/06\/03\/byod-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"BYOD Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"IMG_2635\"<\/a>
This poster used photos taken by smart phones in the previous days.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As I was teaching in China for the past two weeks I encountered a very interesting situation. I taught the same professional development course twice. Since I have never worked with Chinese teachers before, my first week was full of new experiences and new insights. I have been learning more than they did (speaking with an interpreter, interacting with teachers from a different culture, etc…) One thing I have learned that they are attached to their smart phones. And to be honest, it bothered me at first. I felt they were rude since they were texting and looking at their phones all the time. I have been thinking if I should have banned the phones whatsoever, but I was working with adults from a different culture and I didn’t want to appear pushy myself. However, during the second week, I decided that instead of fighting smartphones, I should use them for learning. I should consider them as an opportunity and not as a hindrance or a distraction. At the beginning of the second week, I asked teachers how and why they use phones all the time. One answer was to connect with friends (WeChat – something akin to Facebook chat messaging system, but it has pin-yin built in), another one – to take photos, to look up things, to translate some of the words I have used into Mandarin. This was very reasonable and after all I use my smart phone for the same purpose.<\/p>\n

As a result, during the second week we used the phones to:<\/p>\n

a) Take photos of the activities they liked, so they can recall them more easily when they are back to class.<\/p>\n

b) Use smartphone apps to do the activities, such as Desmos graphing calculator, GoeGebra, Logger Pro, PhET, plickers, etc.<\/p>\n

c) Come up with activities that can be used with smartphones to promote STEM learning.<\/p>\n

d) To share best ideas from the course with friends and family.<\/p>\n

What was the result? Our meetings became so much richer and more interesting. Since the course focused on the use of technology in mathematics and science education, I am surprised it took me almost a week to figure it out. However, on a brighter side, it shows that we all are humans and as much as we think we all are open minded, we have a lot to learn. I am glad I did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I was teaching in China for the past two weeks I encountered a very interesting situation. I taught the same professional development course twice. Since I have never worked with Chinese teachers before, my first week was full of… Read moreBYOD Dilemma<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","content-layout-excerpt-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2943,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941\/revisions\/2943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}