One of my colleagues From my now former school tweeted that he and his team are “going digital classroom next year.”
This intrigued me. I want to know what he means by that and what that might look like and how that will play out and what plans there making and I’m planning to interrogate him.
So far I know that the planning adopting Edmodo with their classes. So I’ve decided to use this as a jumping off point to look into BYOD policies, pros and cons and what’s happening in other districts jurisdictions. I’m also going to look more into Edmodo and what it is how it looks maybe compare it to the MS SharePoint alternatives that our district is pushing and look into also am blogging with edublogs as an alternative.
Through my conversations on Twitter with the teachers involved in planning that project of going digital as well as another teacher at our school who teaches the grade 6 MACC class which essentially runs is a one-to-one program I am looking at what’s happening at our school in terms of practical everyday usage devices. As a school we don’t have a vision statement or policy on bringing your own devices, we do have the code of conduct.
Here is an excerpt from the electronic devices protocol contained within that document:
“Based on feedback from students, staff and parents, the use of electronic devices is not permitted during instructional time (defined as all times between 8:40 a.m. and 2:50 p.m. except nutrition break and lunch time) unless directed by a teacher or staff member. Off-site activities including field trips and sports trips are also included in this prohibition. Examples of electronic devices include but are not limited to cell phones, Blackberries, iPods and iPads, iTouch’s, iPhones, MP3 players, cameras, etc. Teachers are engaging in expanding their use of technology to support student learning and as such may ask that students use programs and devices under their supervision in their learning, with the intent that all students develop a constructive understanding of the use and misuse of technology. Valuable items are brought to school at the owner’s risk and should be kept in the student’s locker. The school is not responsible for items that go missing during the course of the day.”
One of my first steps is gonna be reading “Bring Your Own Device: A Guide for Schools” created by the Alberta government. It is divided into three sections policy,practices and planning. It is not “a step-by-step guide” for implementing bring BYOB in schools, what it does is bring up a number of questions and issues for consideration I’ve included below the list from the table of contents which gives you an idea of the kinds of questions the document is asking.
1. Policy
a. What value do personally owned devices bring to student learning?
b. What BYOD models are school authorities adopting?
c. What policies are needed to ensure high quality use?
2. Practices
a. Will students be ready to learn using personally owned devices? Will they be good digital citizens?
b. What pedagogies fully leverage personally owned devices for teaching and learning? What types of professional development help teachers leverage such pedagogies?
c. How can digital content be used effectively through personally owned devices?
d. What infrastructure will be required to support student use of personally owned
devices?
3. Planning
a. What are the key school readiness indicators that ensure effectiveness of a BYOD
model?
b. What are the BYOD implications with the community?
I have to admit, I am really liking the BYOD in this course. It is the first time I have taught this way and I love that we are able to move around the classroom, we aren’t tied to the rank and file of the computer lab. Also, I notice people are getting very good with the devices they have, even on the first day when they were using their smartphones! We aren’t used to using our digital devices for learning, we are much more habituated to using them for distraction or entertainment. It is a new experience to be using our digital technologies for serious work. This will be true for students, as well. As far as access to technology for students, I think there has to be a policy and fund to ensure every student has basic technological affordances available. There might be a way for a family to provide service hours to the school so that the students are able to ‘work’ for their device, they don’t have to be embarrassed about being made an object of charity. There has to be a solution to that problem, it doesn’t seem to me to be a problem that does not have a solution.
The only problem that I see with a “loaner” is that students will never develop the same level of familiarity with the device and lacks the opportunity to customize it to suit their preferences. This can’t be a huge problem though. Some suggestions for solutions to the equity issue are to have some number of various devices available to be signed out. This would give students with need some choice and would also enable students to use different devices with different capabilities for different activities. As you say there are solutions, if there is a will.