BYOD: Bring Your Own Device

Our new school initiative, BYOD (not as exciting as BYOB) has been in the works since September and has finally become "official." The program allows students to bring any electronic device that might have applications to help them with daily tasks in class. Kids with laptops, iPads or other tablets, e-readers such as Kindles, and even smartphones, have begun bringing them to class and are now using documents on their devices to take notes, write down homework, and do in-class research. I've mentioned this in several comments on other blogs, so I thought I'd put up a post about it, explaining what it looks like in my classroom.

I have one student who brings a laptop, but most bring tablets and phones. Students are sometimes your best resource in finding a new app to use for educational purposes. Many of them found their own app versions of digital agendas for keeping track of homework & upcoming tests, flashcard apps for studying, and for my class, an online French-English dictionary to help with writing. Here is an example from my own classroom. Students were doing an activity in their textbook working with partners. About half used pencil & paper while half wrote their answers into their device:

I have not had any problems with texting or any other inappropriate device use at the middle school level. I have at the high school level, but no more than usual! A colleague of mine put it in perspective for me when he compared it to a student doing his science homework in your French class. You don't confiscate the binder and create a new "no science binder" policy, you simply tell the student to put it away. I have had to tell a student "we are not using our devices right now, you should only be listening" but it hasn't needed to go further than that. So far BYOD is much more of an asset than a liability!

Here is a link to the Cheshire BYOD Resource Center