BYOD and Mobile Learning

I think there are some great advantages to mobile learning and the use of mobile devices in the classrooms.  However, I also feel there are many obstacles to overcome in making it a success.  Below is an excerpt from a web article on this topic that covers several key questions.  The one thing to remember in all of this is, it isn't going away.  BYOD is the way of the future...
Source: http://1to1schools.net/2012/04/byod-questions-to-consider/

In order for BYOD to work well there must be a strong part­ner­ship between admin­is­tra­tion, Board mem­bers, teach­ers, tech­nol­ogy, stu­dents, and par­ents. Every­one is going to be impacted by 1-to-1 no mat­ter how it is imple­mented, whether BYOD or a stan­dard hard­ware plat­form either pro­vided or spec­i­fied by the school or dis­trict. But with BYOD it’s likely you are going to see some push­back from tech­nol­ogy peo­ple because of the com­plex­ity, change, work, plan­ning and resources required. So here are some ques­tions to consider:

• Have you vis­ited a BYOD school or district?
• If not a team with rep­re­sen­ta­tive stake­hold­ers should do so armed with lots of questions
• Are you already using Google or Zoho or some cloud solution?
• With­out cloud apps BYOD is going to be nearly impos­si­ble to imple­ment in a mean­ing­ful way
• You need the entire school/district com­mu­nity to be able to com­mu­ni­cate, pub­lish, present and share centrally
• How will you define BYOD?
• Will there be a min­i­mum device or specification?
• Will smart­phones be one of the devices?
• How’s your net­work — is it ready for
• Wifi every­where with mul­ti­ple roam­ing wire­less devices
• Cen­tral­ized data secu­rity (Bar­racuda, Light­speed, etc.)
• How will you address logistics?
• Will stu­dents be charged with keep­ing their devices charged, ready and safe/secure?
• Will you have “loaner” devices?
• Will devices be locked up somewhere/somehow dur­ing lunch, tests, sports?
• How’s your curriculum?
• Are teach­ers already used to assign­ments in Google and in using online social media tools so that stu­dent work is already free of hard­ware require­ments — and hap­pen­ing in “the cloud”?
• How’s your dig­i­tal cit­i­zen­ship education?
• Do stu­dents already know how to keep a respect­ful appro­pri­ate dig­i­tal footprint?
• In my book I talk about L.A.R.K. — tech­nol­ogy use by stu­dents should be L — Legal, A — Appro­pri­ate, R — Respon­si­ble, K — Kind
• How’s your com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel with par­ents, students?
• If the device is pur­chased, main­tained, repaired and man­aged by par­ents and stu­dents, it’s going to be impor­tant to com­mu­ni­cate often and well
• How’s your budget?
• Unless you have planned fully for the changes of BYOD you might be blind­sided by some upgrades or unex­pected costs so make sure to ask these ques­tions when you are vis­it­ing BYOD schools

There are ter­rific schools that have been BYOD for years, The Harker School in San Jose comes to mind for instance. Many peo­ple I respect have been writ­ing about BYOD includ­ing William Stites who posted this blog post for Edu­ca­tional Col­lab­o­ra­tors early this year, Lisa Nielsen who wrote about debunk­ing BYOD for T.H.E. Jour­nal and a recent arti­cle in Dis­trict Admin­is­tra­tor starts with a quote from Lucy Gray who I respect very much — this entire arti­cle by the way is an impor­tant read. The Lap­top Insti­tute which is highly rec­om­mended will have threads this sum­mer in Mem­phis on BYOD.

BYOD can be a solu­tion if you do your plan­ning and home­work and try to fig­ure out up front exactly what you’re get­ting into and plan care­fully. You’ll want to be ready to rethink your net­work as not being about enabling a few mod­els of spe­cific con­trol­lable devices but instead as a path­way to the cloud where your school/district-wide learn­ing com­mu­nity resides.

- Pamela Livingston