So how long was it before you were brave enough to ask about what BYOD stood for? I can’t remember exactly how long it was for me but I’m pretty sure I would have blagged my way through the first few conversations before I finally went to look it up. While BYOD isn’t a particularly helpful term for teachers as it doesn’t really have all that much to do with teaching and learning, taking a quick look at its origins can give us a helpful lens for considering how we respond to it in our schools.
BYOD, as a term, originally came from the corporate sector where employers recognised that if employees were able to use their own devices at work (instead of provided ones) they could be more productive. This increase in productivity was largely because they’d be using already existing expertise to operate their devices and in some cases (the research indicates) view their jobs more positively. Despite the security tradeoffs, many employers were willing to be ‘BYOD flexible’ instead of mandating and supporting a single device for employees. It’s perhaps a little ironic then, that as teachers we find it challenging to offer the same flexibility over devices and, more importantly, the apps we want students to learn how to use.
Here’s two reasons for why we might look for ways to provide the original BYOD flexibility for our students in app and device choice:
1) Students know quite a bit about their devices and own learning preferences and strengths. Despite the overstated digital native effect, even if you do know more about using technology for curriculum learning than that game-crazed kid with the nervous wrist-twitch in your class, we’re at least better off with more brains than just our own out there on the hunt for ICTs that help with learning. Just because we’ve come across an amazing ICT that we think will work for every student we’re responsible for, that doesn’t mean there’s not a potentially better alternative out there for a particular student with their own set of learning needs.
2) And more importantly (in my opinion) we have a responsibility to model the selection of ICTs and technology depending on the needs of the job. With the fast, ongoing development of new hardware and software coming at us from multiple fronts, it’s far better for our students if they are able to:
-analyse the needs of a particular problem,
-figure what their skills and capabilities are already,
-investigate what options there are out there,
-identify how much time it’s likely to take to up-skill with them,
-and then decide whether it’s worth it or not.
I’d suggest that in many curriculum areas (other than perhaps technology) it’s rare that students get the chance to consider ICTs in this way. If we can provide these opportunities however, our students will be far better equipped for the future when many of the ICTs we’ve showed them in class will be obsolete. Self selecting ICTs based on needs rather than thinking they can only use one thing just because it’s the ‘industry standard’ or because someone else told them to, much better enables students to be discerning and critical users of technology.
While there can be some risks around manageability in giving students options with ICTs in class, providing a resourced default option for students is one way of supporting them and giving options at the same time. Identifying a default option and further possibilities is particularly easy if we have developed a clear learning outcome first. Students are then able to use the outcome(s) and potentially some further criteria around the capabilities of an ICT to research and select other options if they choose to.
So, given all that, here’s an actual process you could use for selecting an ICT for teaching and learning in your class, provide students with choices and enable them to develop critical thinking skills around technology. With this kind of approach it doesn’t matter if you are or aren’t in a school that has mandated a particular type of device or platform either.
1) Find an ICT with potential! Keep a lookout in the usual places: success stories from other teachers (perhaps from someone’s Teaching as Inquiry) online educational communities, students etc.
2) Analyse your students’ learning context. This is a regularly over-looked step but vitally important! Just because one ICT has worked really well in another context doesn’t mean it will work well for your students. What are your students needs and which part of the curriculum are you presently tasked with delivering?
3) Develop a learning intention that the ICT can help with. Hopefully, if you’ve discovered the ICT in another teaching and learning context and someone else has described their learning intention, you’ll have a head start here. This also needs to be shared with students for the later steps to work.
4) Resource students to use the ICT. Remember, this should be different from the learning intention. This is more about picking up the nuts and bolts skills of using the ICT itself. If the ICT is one that does lots of different things, you might be focusing on particular capabilities. This step is important but can sometimes obscure the learning intention around an ICT if it’s not carefully managed. You don’t need to be the expert here necessarily either especially given how many great online tutorials and resources there are out there. It’s more important that you understand the teaching and learning capabilities of the ICT itself.
5) Give students options by providing opportunities to identify other ICTs that could do similar things. This step is only possible if you’ve done step 3 well and your students have understood how the ICT will help with the learning intention you have in mind. Perhaps your students will even find an old school method like pen and paper that might do the same job! Keep in mind here that what they find may well set you up to better provide other students with opportunities in the future as your list of useful ICTs grows.
6) Monitor outcomes. Did the ICT assist with the learning intention? Was there any other unintended learning intentions it provided? What other ICTs were discovered that might offer other advantages and/or cons? This step can be easy to miss out, particularly if it’s a real whizz bang ICT and the students are enjoying using it or conversely, the time it took students to skill up caused some initial anxiety as they came to grips with the required skills.
So that’s it! While I might have oversold things a little with the word “amazing” and as we know with any abstract process it may happen a little differently in real life, it’s still worth keeping these steps in mind. If we can establish clear learning intentions with an ICT and ensure they’re not obscured for our students by the process of learning how to use it, we are better able to give them the skills they need to evaluate other ICTs in the future and potentially learn the resilience and critical thinking skills needed to use technology well. In a sense, we’re offering them the best of the front and back end of the New Zealand curriculum.
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