Tag Archives: BYOD

21st century learning, Leadership Perspective, Tech, TEL

ISTE13 BoF reflections

Leave a comment

One of the sessions I attended at the ISTE13 conference was a Birds of a Feather discussion.  The original discussion topic was advertised was chromebooks.  When the actual event happened, the chromebooks topic was replaced by a more general discussion on mobile devices in K-12 learning environments.  There were about 8 people at the table, mainly representing independent schools as it turned out.

What really surprised me was the nature of the conversation put forward by most of the participants.  From most participants, the discussion centered around being a “one device school”.  The key question that emerged was:  “How might one go about choosing between the variety of available options: windows netbooks and tablets, android tablets, iPads and chromebooks.”

It seems to me that different tools have different strengths, and that there would be value to having a variety of options available. Besides, at the rate of change with technology,  it would be challenging to set a particular long term direction at this point in time that you could stick to.  Perhaps the key idea is to focus on learning with technology, and leveraging new possibilities rather than focusing on the device itself.  No matter what the device mix is now, things will change.  I believe investing in the infrastructure to support the needs of students and staff in todays 21C learning environment with a variety options including BYOD is the best way forward.

An invitation:  I am curious to know your view.  Please share your thoughts in a comment or tweet.

~Mark

Related Resources

Blog Post:  What’s in a device

21st century learning, Leadership Perspective, Technology in Education

ECOO12 – BYOD Panel Discussion

2 Comments

At the recent ECOO12 Conference held  Toronto ON, I had the opportunity to co-host a panel discussion with Ed Doadt, principal at Waterloo Oxford District Secondary School. The panel discussion, which was scheduled at Friday October 26th, 2012   9:45 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.  (EDT), focused on the topic of “bring your own device” to school (K-12). The panelists covered a broad range of roles from school administrator, CIO (IT), teacher, student, and Education Officer.

Panelists (listed in seating order)

  • John Shanks, UGDSB
  • Urs Bill, Ministry of Education
  • Tim Hawes, OCDSB
  • James Bond, WRDSB
  • Liz Arbuckle, WRDSB
  • Charlotte Carbone, WRDSB
  • Lisa Unger, UGDSB

Guiding Questions for the discussion

1. Panel Intros: name, role, where is your organization re BYOD  0=leave device at home, 10 = widespread use by students and speakers

2. All – biggest pro, biggest con OK

3. All – Responsible use, digital citizenship promotion

4. IT comment – privacy, infrastructure, bandwidth, some – device management

5. All – How do you feel about open device testing? Where do you see this going?

6. Admin, Student – What skills do you look for in a new hire?

7. Time permitting, audience questions/comments

8. Wrap up

Resources

The session was well attended, the discussion interesting and the audience participation in the back channel was great!  Resources from this session are linked below.

BYOD panel discussion audio recording from the Quest Radio 1-24  broadcast.
BYOD panel discussion  participant back channel transcript   from  www.todaysmeet.com

~Mark & Ed

OntCL

OntCL Twitter Chat Highlights from 20120404

Leave a comment

Highlights from the 20120404 Ontario ConnectEd Leaders chat on Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) for learning.

Additional Resources

OntCL Twitter Chat Stream

Keep leading and supporting change!

~Mark

Leadership Perspective, OntCL, Technology in Education

OntCL Twitter Chat primer

1 Comment

On Wednesday April 4th, the Ontario ConnectED Leaders will host their monthly Twitter chat at 8:00 p.m. (eastern daylight time). The topic will be BYOD: leveraging the benefits, getting ready.

Here are a very resources that might help prepare you for the chat topic. I hope to see you in the Twitter chat. Join in with hashtag #ontcl

Leveraging the ‘Instrumented’ Pocket & Backpack by @lisaneale

Intel: Teachers Engage

BYOD in primary

BYOD: What’s in a device?

From Scoopit: A Principal’s memo

From Scoopit: Using student owned devices in the classroom

Chat with PLP’s Periwinkle

~Mark

Note: Cross posted to OntCLC.ca

Social Media, Tech, Technology in Education

BYOD: What’s in a device?

6 Comments

I have had two great opportunities to talk about Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to support student learning — at the Brock U.Teaching with Technology Showcase (Brock U Faculty of Education) and at the Educon 2.4 event.

The discussions covered considerable territory – benefits, challenges and implications for both pre-service and existing teacher training. In my organization, BYOD is certainly a strategy intended to augment access and not replace Board owned equipment. From an IT perspective, building the right infrastructure with sufficient capacity is a critical path forward to support student learning.

There is certainly a wide range of devices that could support learning. I have been pondering the desired functionality needed in any device to support student learning. Here is my initial take on a function list.

Notes/read:  take notes, read common file formats such as pdf and ebook files,

Web enabled: browse web (consume info, research), bookmark, interact with online databases, RSS

Share/Collaborate: write/publish a blog, support wiki use, google docs etc

Digital StoryTelling: capture audio, video, combine with text

Communicate: email, support for standard Social Media tools (FB/Twitter/G+) etc.

Other: good battery life, strong wifi signal

I need your feedback. How thorough is my list? What is missing? Should anything come off the list? What should be added?

Please leave a comment with your ideas, or share an idea with me on Twitter.

~Mark