Tag Archives: BYOD

July 15, 2013 · 10:28 am

future vision project: Action plan for 2013/2014

I’m thinking the moment that my future vision project will encompass next year imagining that I am at my same school that I’ve been teaching grade 7 on a new team. I am thinking about this because I know there’s a job available and it’s possible that I’ll be recalled to this position, but I find it easier to plan
1. I’m going to create a virtual classroom and begin using Edmodo
2. I’m going to implement a BYOB program in my classroom.
3. I’m going to combine ICT teaching and learning with information literacy learning language arts and social studies curriculum incorporating genius hour.

In order to do this I’m going to enlist other members of my team and try to make this a team wide policy. I want to prepare a presentation to show my team. Provided that this goes well on the team level the presentation could also be given to the administration or the entire staff at a staff meeting in fact should be given to the administration in order to get permission to implement these programs.

In order to do the three things above I need to create the Edmodo environment
and figure out if I would need a class website in addition to the Edmodo interface. I think I need to provide blogs for students in order to support their own learning and sharing through the course of their genius hour projects. I will need to organize and personalize the permission forms for this.

I need to look into the necessary structures for BYOD within the school’s code of conduct, whether there is room to create an individual classroom policy.

Another new idea coming from someone’s 10 minutes of Fame: Genius Hour
I found this comment about Genius Hour:
“One thing that you probably thought about when you first heard of genius hour is that you don’t have time to do something like that in your classroom. I’m here to tell you that simply isn’t true. It’s human nature to challenge a new idea when it first enters your ears. We can’t help ourselves but try to poke holes in why something can’t be done. The path of least resistance is often the easiest route to take, because we don’t have to take any action.”

I would love to focus on collaborating with the TL to work on the Genius Hour project with advice from the MACC teachers who do this kind of projects already with the gifted students and why should they have all the fun?

During class today I learned that the position that I was dreaming of was giving to someone else. I am a bit at see, but am not changing the framework of my project unless I get an offer before the end of the week. I really find it easier to imagine a concrete situation.

I have been offered a grade 6/7 position at a different Middle School. Their APL says “This year, several of our grade 6/7 classes are participating in the 1 to 1 Wireless Writing Project, which provides each student, and their teachers, with a laptop computer.” This is all I know about the school and its technology I don’t know when I will be able to get more information.

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July 11, 2013 · 12:16 am

Fighting the forces against change at my school

Sociocultural Homeostasis, dynamic conservatism, institutional isomorphism oh my! How can we effect change in our own schools?

I think that the best way for me at my school (if i were back there again) would be to proceed into the brave new world of ICT by finding like minded souls who are interested in pursuing connectedness, ICT and other related issues and quietly collaborate with them on various projects. This way we will have results that we can share with others.

If I were the teacher librarian at the school I think what I would start by doing this by carving out for myself time to staff meetings to present various topics in ICT. I would also think about setting up a series lunch time proD workshops maybe offer ‘workshop Wednesdays’ and invite staff members to come into the library and collaborate and share around ICT. I know that there are some teachers who would be interested in any of these topics right off the bat. Getting them onside and getting ideas from them would be a piece of cake. But those really aren’t the people that I would be looking for. I would be looking for the people who say “this is the way I do things I’ve always done them this way” or for the people who think “look at my website, I already am doing digital technology”. I would be looking for the people who need a push to stretch themselves beyond their comfort zones.
The topic that we covered today that struck me the most was our discussion of linguistic cognitive domain. The idea that the way that you frame a new idea the words that you use and the way you introduce it will affect other people’s perception of the concept, will Influence their willingness to adopt new techniques used new resources step out of their comfort zone and try new things.
As the librarian you’re in the ideal position to introduce new ideas for several reasons:

  • In your role as a teacher librarian you are creating a website and virtual library so you’re more likely to be familiar with a lot of these things
  • You’re the person that works with all the members of the staff and all the members of the student population
  • You are the one (in the minds of other teachers at least) who has time to invest in learning about ICT because you don’t have lesson planning and marking to do. (some of them think this I know)

So time and care must be put into planning how you can introduce new ideas and how you’re going to change the culture of your school to try to counteract some of the forces like institutional isomorphism that make change more difficult.

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July 8, 2013 · 10:07 pm

BYOD and “going digital”

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?

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July 5, 2013 · 2:41 pm

Module 4 part 1:where I was, where I am, where I might go…

What I am looking into and thinking about at the end of this first week:

  1. BYOD, one to one, how does it work? is it a good idea? as a solution to access problems within the school. Who is doing it? who is doing is near me?
  2.  District policy: what is it? who is creating it? how is it being implemented in the district?
  3. Finding out who is doing what in my district with ICT
  4.  Finding/making connections with people who share interests and are working on the things I am working on
  5.  Learning how to organize my own digital intercations and how to help students be organized. Can I use my own personal blog (which I just started this week so that I will share my practice not merely share separately and solely for each of my individual UBC courses)
  6. Pursuing particular resources ie mindmeister, blogger, wordpress, wordle, popplet, pearltree, and so on
  7. Learning how to use this application to do what I want with my blog posts (arg photos and using the iPad are proving to be challenges so far)
  8. Creating developing and expanding my PLN, and learning how to talk to strangers, or even people I already know but do not normally engage in these ways.

I find that my mind is very overwhelmed after each of these classes and I am having trouble holding on to all of my thoughts about things so the above list is merely a fraction of the things that have occurred to me during the last 4 days.

What I have done as of 2:25 of Friday afternoon:

  1. all the blog posts and all that that we are required of course.
  2. started a new Blogger Blog for myself Adventures in Reading, Learning, and Teaching (which I chose because I have Google and I had already created a course blog for LIBE 465 using it)
  3. in order to get a grasp on my ‘Connected Self’ I have started a list on my blog of links to all of my content on the web including my Showme Account, Prezis, my other course projects blogs, wikis…that is all I can think of at the moment.
  4. I was able to capture all the blogs I had been following from my Google Reader! ( just in time too 🙁 )
  5. started a Pearltree to represent my own learning on started to collect some materials on some of the topics above
  6. started a popplet can’t get the popples to move and they are all stacked on top of one another got mad and closed the window… I’ll go back to it later
  7. I have come to sit in the Chapman Library Commons to contemplate what it is all about.
  8. decided to stop at 449

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