Tuesday, August 28, 2012

BYOD? Really?

I have just been on a conference and talking to lots of schools about BYOD.  When I say BYOD I mean a "bring anything you want, you know what you will learn best with" scenario where the student or their parents take total responsibility for the type of device that the student uses.

I must say that I don't get it. 

Why would you look at BYOD in a School?  To my mind it is a path fraught with danger and problems.  From what I can see none of the problems are technical as far as getting devices connected and working.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that teachers will be the one' s that are responsible for all levels of tech support as it will not be possible for a IT department to offer any support for devices beyond making sure that they can connect. 

the teacher then has to be able to tell from looking at any device that it isn't a 3G only device which can access the Internet unfettered by pesky filters or monitoring software. 

It is possible that there are 1 or 2 teachers in the Education System who could manage that task but most are not going to be able to so will simply ignore technology totally.  The devices will not be incorporated into the learning, technology would move back to the labs and we could all go home happy.

I will keep the thoughts flowing on the 1 : 1 versus BYOD argument.

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