By Craig Olson
As I read through the articles and the interviews, I was pleased to see that there was a variety of perspectives on BYOD presented. With issues ranging from equality of access to teacher time spent doing tech support, there are still bumps in the road to fully integrated BYOD in schools. Particularly intriguing to me were the use of iPads by forestry students, differences in time required for different devices to boot-up, ways to address student distraction, and adequate training for teachers. In a nutshell, training post-secondary students on devices that are the industry standard makes complete sense. College and university students expect to have expenses such as fees so requiring an iPad is not unreasonable, especially with savings from a reduction or the elimination of textbooks. I wouldn’t have predicted that there was such a variation in the time required for different devices to be ready for use in a class activity. It’s good to know ahead of time that could be an issue. Teaching is about planning and predicting as much as anything. As much as we are all told that student engagement is the answer to our problems, it’s nice to hear from those with experience that even when students are learning online, there is always something more interesting a click away.
In my alternate school, poverty is an issue for many of our students. That said, I am surprised by the number of students who have their own expensive devices with plans to get the newest version in the near future. It seems like having a device for connecting socially has an unreasonably high importance for families that sometimes struggle to buy food.
In my ideal world, students in the public K-12 system would be provided with the proper tools required for their learning. If that means schools acquire devices for all students, so be it. But my ideal, is not everybody’s ideal.
As I read through the articles and the interviews, I was pleased to see that there was a variety of perspectives on BYOD presented. With issues ranging from equality of access to teacher time spent doing tech support, there are still bumps in the road to fully integrated BYOD in schools. Particularly intriguing to me were the use of iPads by forestry students, differences in time required for different devices to boot-up, ways to address student distraction, and adequate training for teachers. In a nutshell, training post-secondary students on devices that are the industry standard makes complete sense. College and university students expect to have expenses such as fees so requiring an iPad is not unreasonable, especially with savings from a reduction or the elimination of textbooks. I wouldn’t have predicted that there was such a variation in the time required for different devices to be ready for use in a class activity. It’s good to know ahead of time that could be an issue. Teaching is about planning and predicting as much as anything. As much as we are all told that student engagement is the answer to our problems, it’s nice to hear from those with experience that even when students are learning online, there is always something more interesting a click away.
In my alternate school, poverty is an issue for many of our students. That said, I am surprised by the number of students who have their own expensive devices with plans to get the newest version in the near future. It seems like having a device for connecting socially has an unreasonably high importance for families that sometimes struggle to buy food.
In my ideal world, students in the public K-12 system would be provided with the proper tools required for their learning. If that means schools acquire devices for all students, so be it. But my ideal, is not everybody’s ideal.