Given the crowded curriculum and the high stakes tests, this article is overly optimistic about the maker movement in schools, as opposed to out of schools
DARPA is funding "hackerspaces"--high-tech workshops to give high school students opportunities to explore engineering and learning through creation--at 1,000 U.S. high schools.
Published Online: October 17, 2011 Published in Print: October 19, 2011, as Crafting Your BYOT Policy For the small but passionate minority of school districts that are opening doors to student-owned mobile devices, there's a lot riding on how effective the policy shift turns out to be in improving teaching and learning.
I will be looking strongly at this experiment to assist with the charter school district I am putting together.
I can understand a districts hesitance towards the BYOT because of its responsibility for and inability to control the accessing of inappropriate content on such devices. What I would like to see - even if in baby steps (which I know is occurring in small scale all over the country), is the creation and sharing of engaging lessons that encourage this BYOT movement and combat the urge for students to be inappropriate because of the level of motivation the lesson itself provides. And I would also like to see some of the responsibility shift from policy makers to the students for self moderation - they know what is right and wrong in an educational setting - why can't we hold THEM accountable more?