Take responsibility, by Terry Freedman
The general thrust of education these days is on student-centred learning. This is often expressed by depicting on the teacher’s role as being the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage. Regardless of whether you agree that that’s how things should be (and as it happens I don’t!), the often-stated philosophy these days is that students know best.
But does stating that philosophy mean that it is observed in practice?
Read MoreHere’s an interesting review of Mal Lee’s Bring Your Own Technology.
It’s good because, in my opinion, it’s pretty spot on. I also think the format is interesting.
I was discussing with a colleague the fact that some of us were trying years ago to introduce mobile technology into education. I can’t speak for others, but certainly for me it was an insight into how Sisyphus must have felt. He, as you may know, was the hapless guy who was condemned to push a huge rock to the top of a hill, only to see it roll all the way down again within inches of reaching the top. Doing that once would have been bad enough, but he was sentenced to do it forever.
Here are a couple of interesting cartoon strips about the (possible) effects of new technology. Yesterday’s one is more about unintended consequences, while today’s is really about how apparently intelligent software and monitoring systems might be fooled.
Should schools have Acceptable Use Policies? The following article was originally published in April 2008. Apart from the references to the ‘recent’ Byron Review and to Becta, it still seems very apposite to me. If I were writing the article today, I’d bring in Responsible Use Policies, but otherwise I believe it still stands. What do you think?
One of the things recommended by the recent Byron Review into keeping children safe in a digital world was for schools to have acceptable use policies
I’ve had the enormous pleasure of having to go into London two days running! “Pleasure?!”, you say. “What? With all those people?” Definitely. In fact, it’s partly ‘all those people’ that make it a pleasure. That, the architecture, the general buzz. I’m definitely with Samuel Johnson on this one:
Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.
Which is partly why I always carry a camera around with me. As I explained in Pictures as stimuli, pictures can act as, erm, stimuli. You should always carry a camera of some sort around you, and so should the kids you teach. Oh wait, yes, many of them probably have mobile phones that can take photos and video. Fantastic!
Why has New College gone down the Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) route? An obvious factor is cost. But there’s also another, less prosaic reason...
If a school wishes to go down the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) route, what are the conditions necessary to make this possible in a useful (ie learning enhancing) and hassle-free way?
From my research into schools which have gone down this road, or at least started to, I have come to the conclusion that there are three at least three general conditions which have to be met.
The Bring Your Own Device scheme implemented by Invicta is a hybrid of school-supplied or specified technology for the younger students, and a true BYOD scheme, within certain limits, for the older ones.
The question arises, why have a 1-to-1 scheme given the fact that there is so much technology in the school already?
In late 2011 the issue of mobile technologies and their use in school began to be discussed at a senior leadership team level in Tideway School. However, the school resisted the temptation to race headlong into improving the infrastructure in order to allow students to use their own devices to access lesson and learning resources, because the benefits of doing so in terms of either pedagogy or learning gains were not self-evident.
Equality is a big issue in education, especially in connection with technology. For example, we are used to hearing phrases like “the digital divide”. But what does “equality” mean in this context – or, more pertinent perhaps, what should it mean?
Sheffield High School makes for an interesting case study in that it has not yet actually implemented a BYOD programme. The groundwork has been laid, with the school working with its parent organisation, the Girls Day School Trust, to ensure that its networking infrastructure is robust enough to support the intended developments.
Wildern School has partially implemented Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD. Students may bring their own devices in as long as the teacher and head of department concerned have agreed that phones and other devices would be useful in a particular lesson.
The unique challenge for the Children's Hospital School is balancing the need and desire to enable all long stay students to be able to access their own device with the need for security. Although this challenge is faced by other schools, the uniqueness in this case stems from the fact that 80% of the student population changes very frequently, so the school has little idea what devices students will be bringing.
What are the potential benefits and challenges of introducing a Bring Your Own Device policy into a secondary (high) school? In this, our latest case study, we look at the experience of The Arnewood School Academy in England.
St Crispin’s School is a slightly larger-than-average secondary school serving the town of Wokingham, England. An 11-18 school, it has 1102 students. The number of students with special education needs is about average, whilst the proportion of students from ethnic minority backgrounds is below average. Relatively few students are eligible for free school meals.
St Crispin’s was attracted to the idea of BYOD because, as Mike Elward, Assistant Head/Director of e-learning says
Why did Les Quennevais School, in Jersey, pilot a Bring Your Own Device programme, what challenges have emerged, and how do students use their devices?
The general thrust of education these days is on student-centred learning. This is often expressed by depicting on the teacher’s role as being the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage. Regardless of whether you agree that that’s how things should be (and as it happens I don’t: see Please! No More Mantras!), the often-stated philosophy these days is that students know best.
But does stating that philosophy mean that it is observed in practice?
(c) Terry Freedman All Rights Reserved
