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This is a narrative account with some reflection on the first time I used "Bring Your Own Device" BYOD in Class - I touch on the difference with BYOT, where Device is replaced by Technology. The class is Irish First-year - Seventh Grade USA? Students aged about 13.

I was somewhat taken aback by the interest in my last blog posting entitled "The first ever BYOD (not BYOT) class I taught…" I have now analyzed it against a piece by Earnie Kramer called "Thinking about embracing Bring Your Own Device in your school?"

Schools and school districts who have come to the personal computing party decades late now have conjured a cheap less-empowering way to produce an illusion of modernity. They call it "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) or "Bring Your Own Technology" (BYOT) and it's a terribly reckless idea for the following reasons.

Pearltree I am putting together with resources covering variety of BYOD-related topics, including issues, implementation, classroom strategies, more.

An opportunity to discuss with Mal Lee the work he is doing on the evolution of schooling and to make contact. Mel is currently working on a range of BYOT case studies.

Including parents in the ecosystem of teaching and learning with technology - a short blog posting -

Last year, research firm Gartner heralded the bring-your-own-device, or BYOD, phenomenon as the "most radical shift in enterprise client computing since the introduction of the PC." Such headlines often smack of hyperbole but so far, BYOD has lived up to expectations. If we are preparing students for the world of work, BYOD has to be part of that. Companies are experiencing the same challenges that schools are.

The comments are interesting too!

"Even as we are seeing more schools and educators transform the way they teach and learn with technology, many more are not. .. Opinions vary on the merits of educational technology, but common themes seem to have emerged.  Some of the reasons for not embracing technology have to do with several misconceptions revolving around fear."

Can tablet computers "parachuted" into remote areas transform childhood learning, asks Nicholas Negroponte .. One Laptop per Child (OLPC), even after giving out nearly 3 million laptops, is still criticised along the following lines: "Negroponte believes that you can give a child a laptop and walk away." Whether I ever believed that or not is now secondary. It became such a refrain that I finally asked myself about a year ago: "What if you could?"

When I was a kid, one of my prize possessions was a big, red Swiss Army knife. It had everything from a plastic toothpick and a spoon to a bottle opener and screwdriver. I used it for all kinds of projects, and I always had it with me just in case someone needed to pry something open or tighten something down. Today I carry a more modern multipurpose tool-the smartphone.