The Buzz- BYOB, er… I mean BYOD
Bring your own device (BYOD) refers to a classroom technology model where students are asked to bring their personally owned laptop, tablet, or phone to school for the purpose of learning.
Web-based tools have changed the learning landscape forever. By leveraging these resources, educators can enrich their students learning with advanced interactive content and prepare them for a tech-savvy world that steadily evolves every single day.
Using these modern devices in classrooms to facilitate learning (where applicable) seems like an obvious step forwards in teaching and learning. While we undergo this transition, however, it is crucial that those who are most impacted by this (students) are comfortable with the arrangement. Students who are familiar with the set of tools they are using to learn face a better chance of engaging themselves in their environment. When educational resource providers begin to finely tailor learning to their audience and embrace the advances in teaching over the past 15 years, we can begin to see how we are helping to produce cultured and technologically sound citizens, who are essential to our progress as a society.
I am not the first to suggest that students may identify most strongly with a number of different learning styles, that which best enables them to excel in their studies. The use of devices in the classroom is an opportunity to personalize learning in a way that ensures each student is fully engaged and is successful in achieving learning goals. Software and tools that are being applied in the learning environment are tools that provide users with 24/7 access to ideas, resources, and communities. Consider a classroom where students have personal devices and are perhaps using an e-textbook. There are the immediate advantages of cost-savings and a possibly lighter backpack, but beyond that, the navigational capabilities within the device allow for new innovations such as integrating online videos and quizzes with class discussion forums or to link sections of the e-textbook with feedback provided in online assessments. When learning resources are presented and made available through personal devices, students can feel they are putting forth less of a mental effort to do school work, and instead be leisurely accessing course content and utilizing tools or applications which augment their learning. Blending their personal and academic lives, students have a greater chance of actively taking an interest and excelling in their education.
Genele Rose