By allowing students to bring in their own devices for learning–rather than insisting that they learn both content and device in school–there is an important opportunity to connect with not just their personal lives, but their natural way of doing things.
Equity
While there are students who badly want technology and can’t afford even the $50, that doesn’t seem to be a strong argument against BYOD adoption, especially in light of what it costs—in time and money—to purchase, train, integrate, and maintain—state-funded, district-purchased, school-assigned devices. This is where schools, local organizations, and communities can step in.
Money and Learning
In the United States there can be a tendency to throw money at problems that are not fully understood. As a nation, America lags behind internationally, the “learning market” being one of the few markets proving evasive in lieu of continued effort, struggle, and spending.
Sqworl, like Delicious and Diigo, is a bookmarking tool that can be useful in the classroom. Sqworl takes a screenshot of the sites you bookmark and opens each bookmark in the same browser tab for easy navigation.
Richard Byrne demonstrates Sqworl’s visual bookmark features in his video below.
Koondis works in traditional large introductory lecture classrooms, blended classes and fully online courses that often are filled with students enrolled from various disciplines who are required to be there for their majors.
Described as a “social homework system,” a “discussion forum that puts students in small groups” and even a replacement for the campus learning management system, Koondis is showing great promise as a pill for student satisfaction.
The idea is that Koondis eliminates the need for teachers to read all of the posts. The program even counts posts for the instructor for grading purposes, and alertsthe faculty member to do follow-up when a student isn’t participating.
“According to research by Sumpto…as much as 77 percent of college students use Snapchat every day.
37 percent of the study respondents cited “creativity” as their main use of the app. “Keeping in touch” and “easier than texting” were reasons for 27 percent and 23 percent, respectively.”
Reasons young adults ages 18-26 use snapchat:
“I like sharing weird things I see when I’m out…When you get ugly selfies from someone, that’s how you know you’re good friends.”
“I only ever use it for funny pictures or to show what I’m doing to my friends, but I have people that use it as a replacement for texting.”
“Snapchat is the ultimate social media tool — users want to share their lives to anyone they choose to elicit possible feedback, but without the necessity of it being stored…Snapchat provides an easier answer to Facebook’s ‘What are you doing right now?’ I use it personally to stay in touch with friends and show people what I’m doing.”
Colleges are also starting to get on the bandwagon — Snapchat launched Our Campus Story in October 2014 to four schools.
Robbins, S. P., & Singer, J. B. (2014). From the editor—The medium is the message: Integrating social media and social work education. Journal Of Social Work Education, 50(3), 387-390.
Stretton, T., & Aaron, L. (2015). Feature: The dangers in our trail of digital breadcrumbs. Computer Fraud & Security, 201513-15. doi:10.1016/S1361-3723(15)70006-0
Ekman, U. (2015). Complexity of the ephemeral – snap video chats. Empedocles: European Journal For The Philosophy Of Communication, 5(1/2), 97-101. doi:10.1386/ejpc.5.1-2.97_1
EDpuzzle is a neat tool that allows you to add your voice and text questions to educational videos. On EDpuzzle you can search for educational videos and or upload your own videos to use as the basis of your lesson. EDpuzzle has an online classroom component that you can use to assign videos to students and track their progress through your video lessons.
Chromebook:
Diigo’s Awesome Screenshot tool. Awesome Screenshot is a simple one step installation
TechSmith’s Snagit. Awesome Screenshot will only capture things that are displayed in your web browser. Snagit download the Snagit Chrome app and the Snagit browser extension. . Both tools allow you to draw and type on top of your screenshot images. Macbook and Windows laptops:
Mac keyboard combination of “Command+shift+4” “Command+shift+3” will capture everything on your screen.
Windows computer Snipping tool
Jing to take screenshots on my Mac and on my Windows laptop.
Skitch If you have an Evernote account, you can save Skitch images in your Evernote account.
iPad and iPhone:
Taking a screenshot on an iPad or iPhone is a simple matter of holding down your “home” button (the big round one) and power button at the same time. The image will save directly to your device’s camera roll. When I need to draw, highlight, or type on an image in my camera roll I turn to Skitch again.
Android phones and tablets:
As long as your device is operating on Android 4.0 or later you can take a screenshot by holding down your home button and power/sleep button at the same time. The screenshot should save to your camera roll unless you’ve designated another place for it to save. Once on your camera roll you can use the image in other apps for drawing, cropping, annotating, and sharing. Some Android devices, depending on manufacturer, include a built-in screenshot image editor. Pixlr and Skitch. Skitch on Android offers all of the same features that are outlined above. Pixlr is a more robust tool that allows you to apply image filters in addition to drawing and typing on your images.
Please consider other IMS blog entries on the topics:
Key Trends Accelerating Technology Adoption in Higher Education 6
Long-Term Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in higher education for five or more years
> Advancing Cultures of Change and Innovation 8
> Increasing Cross-Institution Collaboration 10
Mid-Term Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in higher education for three to five years
> Growing Focus on Measuring Learning 12
> Proliferation of Open Educational Resources 14
Short-Term Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in higher education for the next one to two years
> Increasing Use of Blended Learning 16
> Redesigning Learning Spaces 18
Significant Challenges Impeding Technology Adoption in Higher Education 20
Solvable Challenges: Those that we understand and know how to solve
> Blending Formal and Informal Learning 22
> Improving Digital Literacy 24
Difficult Challenges: Those we understand but for which solutions are elusive
> Personalizing Learning 26
> Teaching Complex Thinking 28
Wicked Challenges: Those that are complex to even define, much less address
> Competing Models of Education 30
> Rewarding Teaching 32
Important Developments in Educational Technology for Higher Education 34
Regardless of the technology, what’s the most important lesson for students to learn?
Why do I need to use technology in my daily curriculum?
How are these tech tools enhancing what we’re doing?
What will the students do with these tools – during and after class?
Think Curriculum Enhancements, Not Technology Implementations
1) Learn How Students Are Using Technology at Home
2) Don’t Use Technology for the Sake of Using Technology
3) Focus on Just One Tech Implementation
4) Utilize the SAMR Model
TheSAMR model, developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, represents the stages of tech integration: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition. This model challenges us to assess and reflect on not only how we integrate technology into our curriculum, but also how we modify, redefine and transform our classrooms through its use.
5) Actively Seek Out Professional Development Opportunities
Younger students utilizing QR codes to add a challenging yet fun element to learning to spell.
Older students creating digital books or movies to demonstrate a deep understanding on a topic, rather than simply discussing or assessing it.
Video conferencing with other schools in your area or network to research, discuss, debate and develop potential solutions to globally significant problems.
Skyping with local leaders and guest speakers on specific topics such as coding or programming, networking and composing music.
In Short
Integrating technology into the classroom can be exhilarating, fun, and at times a little scary. That said, I’ve often found that teachers are hungry for more information, and welcome the chance to bring new ideas to the classroom.
In the end, if teachers and their administration are ready to embrace the messiness and the risks that sometimes come with technology, the reward is that your school’s curriculum – which must be strong to start – can truly be taken to the next level, and beyond. Otherwise, we’ll all be still left trying to figure out how an abacus works.
