Bring Your Own
Sunday, August 12, 2012 at 11:12AM In the spirit of bringing more opportunities into learning environments, more and more schools are inviting students to bring their own technology. Shortened as BYOT or BYOD for Bring Your Own Device, the concept is catching on.
AZCentral.com has an article about Phoenix-area schools that are piloting or continuing BYOT. I like the quote from Kyle Ross, Scottsdale Unified School District's director of instructional technology about cheating with digital devices. He says that instead of taking away or banning technology, they are "treating the act, not the tool."
There are many issues that schools have to consider for BYOT, including network capacity and professional development. There's a Twitter hashtag where educators are discussing issues, successes, and tips: #byotchat. Also, read 10 BYOD Classroom Experiments (and What We've Learning From Them So Far) for vignettes and articles from around the United States.
OnlineColleges.net put together an inforgraphic as a graphical overview of BYOD, including pros and cons.
Marc André Lalande in Canada put together an 8-minute cartoon titled BYOD in the 21st Century. It's Star Trek themed and lays out advantages and limitations.
Above are just a few of a growing number of resources about BYOT, and I'll be sharing more in the future.
byot 
Reader Comments (2)
Tony ... and I'll throw these into the BYOD melting pot http://shambles.net/pages/learning/ict/byot/
have fun ....
Hi Tony,
I found your post on BYOD to be very interesting and timely. Our school division (RRCSSD #81) has just implemented a system wide BYOT initiative. The High School in which I teach had a bit of a head start over the rest of the division as our teachers had a full year of discovery with iPads prior to this implementation. I like to think that it was our project that forced the division to take notice and become progressive in its thinking. We did have issues with WiFi and there are still challenges to overcome, but to date, we have 643 students and 48 teachers that are able to use their own technology in class. We were able to purchase 45 staff devices and 60 student devices with a 3 year grant from our school board and therefore provide iPads for in-school use to students who are economically disadvantaged. I would love to hear more of your thoughts on the benefits of BYOT so I can continue to champion the cause with my staff.
Thank you -
Jodi Wilton