Tech Edge - August 2012 - (Page 8)
>> By Carl Hooker BYOT E anes ISD has had a bring your own technology (BYOT) policy in place for several years. Starting in a few classrooms at Westlake High School in 2007, the policy has adapted quite a bit from those initial, early-adoption days. What follows here are the research and trends around mobile devices in schools and the world, as well as the challenges and benefits we discovered during our own BYOT initiative. Research Readers of the New Media Consortium’s K-12 Horizon report (www.nmc.org/horizon-project) have seen the trend in mobile computing rising quickly. In 2007, when some classroom teachers started allowing cell phones in our high school, the report talked about how mobile devices were two to three years from adoption. It turns out they were correct. Pockets of schools were experimenting with bringing in your own cell phones or laptops back in 2007, but it really didn’t start to gain traction in education until 2009. The term BYOT itself wasn’t really readily available on the Internet until late 2008. Up until then, a Google search for BYOT would bring up things like “bring your own taco” and an interesting local morning show on YouTube that talks about “bringing your own taser” (with a whopping 93 views!). The SpeakUp 2011 (www.tomorrow.org/speakup/) study by Project Tomorrow asked students, parents, and educators what value they placed on students having mobile devices on hand. Each group had its own take. 8 techedge >> www.tcea.org From Potential Distraction to Real Integration Administrators felt that BYOT had potential to increase student engagement and extend the learning day. ng Teachers felt like it could improve communication ication and personalize learning. Parents (and some e teachers) were concerned about distraction and n the possibility of personal devices getting stolen, lost, or broken. Students showed the strongest preference for ce using their own personal devices vs. school-issued l-issued laptops, which is hardly a surprise. They crave control ave of their own learning, and a school-issued device feels like a borrowed tool that they don’t value as much as their own device. Current Global Trend Google CEO Eric Schmidt remarked in 2009 that eventually 9 there would be more mobile devices created than babies born in the world. He was right. It’s predicted that the number of mobile users by the end of 2013 will reach 5.9 million. And many of . these users have more than one mobile device on hand. During a e recent debate on 1:1 initiatives in education at SXSWedu, I stood up and proclaimed that 1:1 is already old school. We should ol. be looking at 3:1 initiatives now. A laptop, tablet, and mobile et, phone make up the office of the mobile worker as well as the er dorm room of the college student. With the amount of access mount to mobile devices increasing, what are some trends that are rends being discovered? According to research by the ODM Group (www.odmgrp.com), (www.odmgrp.com), ( it’s predicted that by 2014 mobile devices will surpass all desktop
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