Reflection #2

What attitudes, skills, and concepts have you gained from participating in the course so far?

I have really learned a lot from this course.  I think that the interactions with the flipped classroom, horizon reports, NETS, and the group project were beneficial in making me realize how important technology integration is for the future of our students.  My attitude about the use of technology in my classroom has greatly changed.  I used technology to promote interest and motivation and because they need to know how to use it but now I really feel like I owe it to them to teach them about technology and it is a big responsibility that we have.  I have learned about the benefits of voicethread, diigo, google reader, and other great technologies too!

What have you learned in the course that you will not forget tomorrow?

I have learned that there are so many resources out there to inform and educate teachers about the great things they can do with technology in their classrooms.  There are so many blogs about technology with easy, practical ideas that can be implement right away.  The technology standards are also something that I will not forget to soon, or ever!  They were not really ever discussed in our school and I barely knew anything about them and had never even heard of the horizon report as scary as that may be.  I will be using all the references from this class for many years to come not that I feel like I have been properly informed.

How will you apply what you have learned to your teaching and future learning?

I have been thinking about how I can better use my classroom blog to benefit my students and parents.  I have also been contemplating creating a wiki for my students to interact with.  I have so many ideas for this next year that I want to try.  Creating glogs is something that I think would be beneficial for my students as a review for curriculum.  I can use the mobile labs and all the students can do it at once!  I also plan on informing my colleagues about what I have learned.  One of my co teachers is really great about using technology in her classroom.  I need to work more closely with her to learn more and better inform my teaching.  Maybe I can inform her too.

Blog Post #3

5 Reasons Why BYOD is a Bad Idea

By:  K. Walsh on July 1, 2012

Full article found here:

http://www.emergingedtech.com/2012/07/5-reasons-why-byod-is-a-bad-idea/

“Here are a number of problems with the BYOD initiative for schools:

1. Equipment Inequity: If everyone is bringing their own equipment, even if there is a standard approach to the type of equipment (all laptops or tablets, for example), it is still pretty much inevitable that the brand and/or configuration of each device will vary and with this comes varying functionality and different speeds of throughput and performance. This equates to inconsistent experiences, and different challenges, for one student versus another.
2. Tech Support: With varying types of equipment, and dissimilar configurations and software levels, come a wide variety of technological hurdles. We all know that trying to use apps on the Internet or doing just about anything else with a computer, tablet, or smartphone, can yield plenty of little issues (this is why techies have jobs!), and every variation in configuration brings another potential point of failure of complication. Now the teacher starts losing class time to tech support and troubleshooting, and the school’s techs have just picked up a slew of new and unpredictable issues to deal with.
3. “Bring Your Own Distraction“ (I’m sure someone else probably already coined this little twist of phrase, but I’m still amused by my own cleverness!): When the device is the student’s, it can be loaded with plenty of games, social networking apps, inappropriate content, and who knows what else. The possibilities for this sort of distracting content and software are undoubtedly increased in a BYOD scenario, despite whatever policies may exist to help limit or prevent this issue.
4. Internet content filtering: This is a necessary fact of tech life in most schools – Internet content must be filtered, and there are technological considerations to make this happen. When kids are bringing their own tech to school, it makes in increasingly harder to manage, and this is only becoming more problematic thanks to the increasing proliferation of 3G and 4G wireless personal devices. A BYOD program would only add to these complications, and make it that much harder for your technology department to ensure compliance with content filtering objectives and the protection of students from inappropriate content while in school.
5. “MBTY” (Mine is Better Than Yours) Syndrome: Isn’t school life challenging enough for some kids (and their parents) without the additional pressure of having to keep up with the Jones kid? Some kids are going to have the most expensive, best equipped tech, and some of them are going to brag about it. The less fortunate kids (and the teachers) shouldn’t have to deal with that, and nobody wants to hear it.”

My response:

I think you raise some very valid points here.  BYOD may work well for some schools but others may find it a challenge.  Equipment inequity is one that strikes a nerve with me.  I get that life is not always fair and you need to make do with what you have but these are children who don’t have control over their parents’ financial situation.  A school in my district had Smartboards a full three years before mine did because their students’ parents donated the money for them.  The issues with distractions and content filtering are also good points.  We would have to do a lot of teaching about appropriate/inappropriate use before letting students use their own devices.  Digital citizenship would need to be added to all levels of curriculum.