BYOD - Bring Your Own Device

 

Bringing Your Own Device in Schools

By Michelle Amundson

The use of personal devices in a school setting, especially the classroom, has generally always been against school policy because of concerns of distraction. Some schools have been straying away from this policy against students' own personal devices. 

Fairfax county, outside of Washington D.C., adopted the BYOD policy in 2011 in an attempt to embrace technology use instead of shunning it (George). Students who are seeking answers in the classroom while working on assignments can use their cellphone to find the answer. This allows students to find answers in a much more efficient way than trying to find it in a textbook. I think this is a great policy to adopt as it reflects real life technology use in problem solving, both at work and at home. One would not look for a textbook or even a lot of tangible resources available when a quick Google search could find the answer in far less time.

While this can be a definite benefit to BYOD in classrooms, it is not without its drawbacks. Some issues with this policy can be equity, and problems that arise from differences in devices. Not all students will have the means to bring their own device, so resources must still be available to help and bridge this gap. Aside from this, when bringing in personal devices, it leads to different programs and software being used so the potential for not being able to help a student with specific issues arises. Despite this, most teachers who had worked with a BYOD policy had almost all of their students able to figure out problems that arose on their device by either asking peers for help, other peers offering to help, or even getting help from the teacher (Fincher, p.98). 

There’s also the disparity between different types of devices being brought, like laptops and tablets. Teachers were concerned that internet browsers of tablets were not able to handle all of the sites that were accessible on laptops (Fincher, p.94).  

I find it interesting that schools had implemented BYOD policies that allowed for use of these devices in classrooms over a decade ago, yet the policy has not seemed to gain nationwide traction in the way that I would expect. Though there seem to be several hurdles to BYOD, the result does seem to be a net positive. Personally I think the use of devices in school also lends toward that of the real world and work environment. These devices are always around us and at our disposal at work or home as adults, so incorporating them into school allows practice of the skills like time management on devices and learning to deal with potential distractions.

Works Cited

Fincher, Derrel. Bring your own device (BYOD) programs in the classroom: Teacher use, equity, and learning tools, Pepperdine University, United States -- California, 2016. ProQuest, https://login.ezproxy.palomar.edu/login?auth=shibboleth&url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/bring-your-own-device-byod-programs-classroom/docview/1807413487/se-2.

George, Donna S. "Schools invite mobile tech to the party." The Washington Post, Sep 15, 2014. ProQuest, https://login.ezproxy.palomar.edu/login?auth=shibboleth&url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/schools-invite-mobile-tech-party/docview/1561937247/se-2.