BYOD in public schools, really?

In this article

I’ll discuss some of the pros and cons, what other educational groups are saying about BYOD in Public Schools [/pushing] and because I believe BYOD in public schools is a bad idea [from the perspective of an IT specialist, Developer, former student and a concerned parent]. There are a handful of bloggers who are against BYOD in public schools, but I think they don’t put the problems of this kind of politics into perspective. I want to start with some extreme examples of BYOD But for now, let’s put some of the basics aside:

Bringing classrooms into the 21st century is an expensive undertaking

Painful budget cuts have made buying tablets and other devices unfeasible, district officials say. Under the current administration, public schools in the US must switch to digitized textbooks by 2016. Therefore, schools are asking students to “BYOD,” or Bring your own device. Over the past year, BYOD gold BYOT The programs (Bring Your Own Technology) have been piloted in Ohio, Minnesota, Texas and Georgia, with more states possibly on the way, and they say it’s a successful response for schools that can’t afford school-owned devices.

District officials insist they are the best and only option available

Many teachers, parents, and public education advocates wonder where BYOD Do they drive in Public Schools? With schools across the country potentially losing more funding, are students and their families now supposed to make up the difference? How will the prevalence of ‘mixed’ devices affect the classroom? Or, in the long run, affect the educational experience of the student?

In most cases, the primary devices have been mobile phones. [because this is what >70% of students own]and the runner-up, tablets [a little bit more expensive than their cousins]. Laptops are quickly fading in the classroom as mobile tablet technology is almost equivalent to laptops, usually less expensive but much more ‘mobile’. So should schools set policies that allow students to use their own technology tools in the classroom? – I say no, absolutely not!

According to ED Data Express, 48% of the national average of primary and secondary students are ‘low income students’. Mississippi being the highest with 70% in 2011 and New Hampshire at its best: 20%. Now let’s put our feet in the “shoes of demography” before we read on…

BYOD it also means you have to bring your own apps, content, services and mobile broadband according to Edutopia.

If you own a smartphone or media tablet, you know it’s pretty useless without apps, content, services, a mobile broadband plan [especially in an educational environment].

Good technology, when used correctly, is the window to the world.

We must be sure that we are teaching our students the best way to use these tools but with equity for all students and, most importantly, in the best interest of the student. Dynamic mobile devices can and have been shown to increase student performance relative to ‘static’ ones [or traditional textbook] learning while saving a lot of money for schools, but it is also very important that all students have equal access;

A Parent and Student Perspective

Look 5 years into the future: Let’s meet Billy and Roxanne, both future 7th graders at XYZ Unified who just implemented a BYOD policy. Roxanne had just received a state-of-the-art 10-inch tablet for her birthday over the summer. Her parents got all the necessities, including a Bluetooth keyboard, a case, and a fast, unlimited data plan through her local mobile carrier.

Billy’s parents just found out about the new policy over the summer, but Billy already owns a state-of-the-art 4-inch smartphone and has it fully loaded with all the popular games and apps. Billy’s device is on a “shared data plan” with his family and the carrier’s data service is sketchy at best. Since Billy’s parents just bought him the shiny new phone, they can’t afford a bigger device, and on top of that, the district sold the new “works with any mobile device” policy and content to get his parents to agree that what they has is enough.

One week at school, both Roxanne and Billy are in the same biology class and are given a class assignment: read a chapter from the digitized textbook delivered via the school’s WiFi intranet, answer a few questions, and perform a short electronic quiz about what they had just learned, all at the end of the term. Both students are thrilled to finally be able to use their personal devices for homework and can’t wait to get it done. Roxanne has several paragraphs on her reading assignment and Billy is still waiting for his to upload? How could this be? Aren’t you both using state of the art devices and both using the same WiFi network? Yes, but I can tell you that it’s not the schools delivery system’s fault and I’ll explain why in a moment.

Billy’s reading assignment finally loads and now it’s hard to read – he has to zoom in to make the text big enough to read and now only a fraction of the data is visible on his small 4 screen inches; He now has to scroll or ‘drag’ the content from left to right and from bottom to top in order to absorb the information he has to learn. By the way, his friend Joey of his next to him has a 7-inch tablet and is experiencing some of the same dilemmas as Billy. [just not as much of that scrolly -dragging thing]. Billy finally finished reading his homework and handed in his Q&A, but he notices the class bell is about to ring. He now he has to hurry to complete the questionnaire. Meanwhile, Roxanne is getting ahead of tonight’s homework because she had finished ten minutes earlier.

So what happened? Does Roxanne learn faster than Billy? No. Was Billy’s data plan provider slow that day? No. Remember they are at school using the same WiFi provided by the district [at home would be another blog in its self]. So the quick answer is NO MOBILE DEVICE IS THE SAME.

In part 2,

I’ll explain the technical details of why no mobile device is the same [even of the same screen size] – how content is developed and delivered and how data is purged and then uploaded, and more importantly, how this affects speed and user capacity, or the student experience…