Virtual Learning Network

Comments

• • Ngaire Shepherd-Wills@ngairesw

  

  Ngaire Shepherd-Wills 3123 days ago

  Both great articles. Definitely agree with all the "pros" mentioned- collaboration, engagement levels and more visible learning. Our home/ school partnerships are becoming stronger through our byod programme, especially when combined with other tools like our blogs and online modelling books. 

• • Paul Spicer@Paul.Spicer

  

  Paul Spicer 2709 days ago

  I particularly like the point about 'student driven learning'. Particularly as students get older, more of their learning is going to come from their own study instead of just regurgitating what the teacher has told them. Teachers are now changing from being 'teaching what to learn' to 'teaching how to learn' which I think is brilliant.

• • Neil Penfold@Neil.Penfold1

  

  Neil Penfold 2581 days ago

  Our school is finally going to BYOD in 2017 after are a year-long pilot of Chromebooks.

  As with any new initiative,  we have those staff that are embracing the change and see it as a great opportunity, whilst others can only see challenges and problems.

  We are letting the students decide what they bring,  as long as it meets our basic spec's.  It will be interesting to see what they bring.  Our guess is a combination of iPads and Chromebooks.

  The main concerns and topics of discussion at the moment are some logistical ones around things like security and storage.

  Whilst this is obviously important and needs to be given careful consideration,  our focus is on improved teaching and learning.  We are currently re-working our learning framework,  and see our first context of the year being "Digital Citizenship". It will be interesting to see how the two combine,  and what type of positive outcomes we get for the students.

  There are some fears that our students will be even more stuck behind screens,  but as a leadership team we are determined to ensure that BYOD leads to improved pedagogy,  better engagement,  deeper thinking and high-quality student outcomes.

  I enjoyed reading the short article "7 myths about BYOD" by Lisa Nielsen - the point she makes about teachers and students working together to discover the "limitless possibilities that a tech-rich environment provides", and how it can enrich their learning, excites me.  Student voice and co-construction of learning contexts is strong in my current school,  and will be very interesting to see where the students take us on this learning journey.

  I was lucky to listen to Sugata Mitra speak at the recent ACEL conference.  What an inspirational and thought-provoking message he has. His research with "Schools in the Cloud" has led him to assert that, "Groups of children with access to the Internet can learn anything by themselves."  I would love to have the courage to try some of his ideas in our classrooms.  Certainly, we have the flexibility and freedom to do this at a junior high school level.

  Whilst we will have a strong e-pedagogy PD focus next year,  I like the point that the author made about teachers not having to be an expert on every app and every device that students bring to the table :"When the students bring in their own devices, then they are now the experts on the technology, and they can help each other. The teacher is then able to focus on the educational uses of the technology."  Surely is this the key to the whole argument for BYOD in our schools.

  Watch this space in 2017 ......