Sharon O'Connor's List: BYOD

• Osseo Area Schools in Hennepin County, Minn., doesn't have the budget to support a huge mobile device initiative, said Tim Wilson, the district's chief technology officer. And neither does fellow Minnesota district Edina Public Schools,

• here in the 21st century, not having one-to-one computing in schools is simply not acceptable. Unfortunately, rare is the school district that can afford to sustain a one-to-one laptop program year after year.
• Now for the bad news: The heteroge- neity of devices that will exist when students bring their own will cause teachers and curriculum folks migraines, cause IT staff nightmares, cause school legal staff angina, cause business managers apoplexy and cause principals and superintendents (more) sleepless nights.

  • NOTE: This can be true, but can also be managed by limiting the types of devices that students can bring in. For instance, one school allows students to bring their own netbook, tablet (including iPad) or laptop.
• The good news is that the heterogeneity challenge is being addressed today and will be solved over the next few years.

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• "These kids often have better technology at home than they do at school."
• "We're trying to get away from saying you have to use this certain type of technology,"
• However, there are certain challenges to allowing students to use their own technology, as well.
  
  "It's fraught with a lot of issues, including safety and security issues,"

  • NOTE: See TechLearning: BYOD and Security article.
• Some of the things to be discussed include keeping students from visiting unauthorized websites, barring use of the devices during prohibited times, and protecting against theft.
  
  Many issues are also logistical, Graden said, such as providing a wireless network substantial enough to facilitate so many users at once.
• some students and their families simply cannot afford to purchase expensive electronic devices on their own.
  
  "For every kid who got an iPad for Christmas, there are a lot that didn't," he said. "The question then becomes, 'How do we provide these things for students who can't afford them?'"
  
  However, Graden said he considers the challenges hurdles to clear rather than roadblocks, and said the potential upside far outweighs the potential downside.
• Widespread connectivity to the Internet also allows access to curriculum resources that are up to date.

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• Concerns remain about students who are unable to purchase or borrow a device for use in the classroom, but districts might find creative ways—such as asking local businesses or community organizations for help—to provide devices in such instances, advocates of the trend say.

• Research-based benefits of one-to-one mobile learning initiatives might include:

  • Improvements in attendance and discipline
  • Broader array of learning resources and experiences
  • Increased frequency and quality of supportive individual and group interactions
  • Improvements in student and parent attitudes toward the school
  • Increases in student achievement ^[6]
• April 2010 data from the Pew Research Center indicated that 75 percent of students ages 12-17 own a cell phone or a smart phone.
• some challenges that surround incorporating mobile devices into classrooms include the speed with which technology changes and ways in which educators might differentiate between what is good for teaching and learning and what is simply technology for technology’s sake.
• “BYOT isn’t about the devices themselves—kids bring in a variety of technology—it’s about creating constructive change in teaching practices,”
• IT operations aren’t burdened with a BYOT initiative because students handle maintenance and updates for their own devices, Clark said.

  • NOTE: Interesting! This is the opposite point of view of some of the other articles.

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• True BYOD will never be a solution for schools that continue to focus on standardization of hardware and applications.
• keep in mind that BYOD does not proclude “targeted purchasing” of technology within a school system.  Schools will continue to need specialized equipment for specific learning needs.
• It is time to give our students ownership over their learning through the use of their own devices.

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• Since there is no school-wide mandate about BYOD, teachers have the flexibility to let students use their own devices or not; the tech staff merely makes it possible. “We’ve been doing this for a couple of years and have had zero problems since we started,” Swan says. “Students who have their own tech can use it; others use products that the school supplies.”

• how to handle the changes that will make instruction possible. He’s concerned about teachers having to provide lessons for a mixed population of products. How do you teach about Excel spreadsheets, for instance, if one student has a two-inch screen and another has a laptop?

    

  To address this matter, Berger’s team is working with a couple of vendors to deliver applications that will be device independent. “A lot of programs and resources are Web based or going up to the cloud, but on a small device the Web can be a problem,” he says. “For instance, iPhones don’t have Flash. We have to know that kids will get the content.”
• A final, and perhaps the most important, reason the district is so keen on using Web 2.0 tools is that they are device neutral, and so another potential burden is removed.

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• Staff members have spent the school year thus far in a professional development sequence that will ultimately deepen their understanding of how to authentically weave technology into the curriculum to create engaging and powerful learning experiences
• In an effort to replicate the real world, one of our goals is to equip students with the knowledge of how to analyze tasks, to choose the most appropriate tool and then use it appropriately to enhance learning.
• students, parents and staff members will come together as co-learners as we talk about ways in which technology can support learning.
• "So while the mish-mash of technology may prove to be challenging for teachers and IT staff to manage and control, in the end this isn't about management or control of learning. It's about helping students use the tools and gifts they have at their disposal, maximizing that potential and showing them new possibilities as well."
• "It's not an opportunity, it's an obligation. I don't think we have any choice. I think we have an obligation to change the rules, to raise the bar, to play a different game, and to play it better than anyone has any right to believe is possible."

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• It's not a tech goal; it's a learning goal."
• The district didn't force every school and teacher to change the learning environment at a specific time. Instead, the district made the student-owned devices option available, and let schools decide if and when they're ready to experiment with it.
• this is the world we live and work in, how do we bring that into the classroom?"
• each school had a contact to go to for help connecting personal devices through the network access control.
• Along with solving these technical challenges, the district technology staff made sure each school had a contact to go to for help connecting personal devices through the
• They also encouraged schools to take advantage of the technical expertise many students have. They could either create student groups that could provide first level support or encourage students to ask each other for help.
• schools have to prepare teachers to make this switch.
• The switch to personal mobile devices has moved the focus away from getting information to learning and asking questions.

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• School boards must ensure that all the mobile devices in each classroom have a minimal level of functionality.
• “minimal level” doesn’t mean “low level!”
• Each student needs a serious computing device that supports media creation and manipulation and 24/7 Internet access. BYOD shouldn’t be a license to let student-provided devices set the bar for what is pedagogically necessary.
• is it good enough for schools to provide low-income students with devices that only support Wi-Fi and thus enable them to access the Internet only on the school campus during the school day? On the other hand, what about the students who are not classified as low income but whose devices are less powerful than the ones given to the low income students?
• This issue—what the kids can and can’t do with their personal devices in and out of school—is the 800-pound gorilla.
• While BYOD is not a simple means of getting to one-to-one, it is still the only viable, long-term solution.

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