BYOT

JD has been more prolific at posting on the topic than I at http://geekreflection.blogspot.com/... but here's my two cents...

We began a voluntary BYOT program this semester in our private, 9-12 college preparatory school. I tend to use the term (or acronym as the case may be) BYOT as I see student choice evident not only in device, but in all the various tools student use.


Our goal in BYOT is critical in understanding why we chose this model:

Brebeuf Jesuit IT focuses on the learning needs of the students, creating an environment where students, faculty and staff:


• have the ACCESS to all the resources necessary for teaching and learning;


• develop EVALUATION literacies (skills) to discern appropriateness of their tools, their actions and their behavior;


and


• are supported in the USE of technology tools personalized to the learner.



I approached our faculty and staff with Marc Prensky’s “nouns vs verbs” argument. It’s not important to get hung up on the nouns (Mac, PC, tablet, desktop, Word, Pages) in education. What we need to focus on are the verbs – what we DO to illustrate mastery. For example, with BYOT, our teachers are still confident that they can teach persuasive writing techniques. How students evidence learning can be done on a Mac, PC, mobile tablet… heck a cell phone (which will happen once and lesson will be learned). What matters is not the device or word processing program used. What matters is the academic learning objective of the persuasive essay. We are finding that students are more engaged in determining the best tool for the job when they are held responsible for demonstrating the learning objective. Learning how to access, evaluate and use technology to meet one’s objective is critical and oh, so valuable for the future.