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the district shelved the idea when it became apparent that students preferred using their personal mobile devices and that the cost of buying and ­refreshing ­notebooks every three to four years would be ­prohibitive

surveyed the 155 eighth-graders ­participating in the pilot, they learned something ­interesting: Although students loved the idea of having their own computer to do their homework, 52 percent of them were using their personal computers rather than those issued by the school

IT department beefed up the wireless network in its two middle schools and the high school and standardized on a set of cloud-based applications

10 BYOD Classroom Experiments (and What We’ve Learned From Them So Far)

What can Holy Trinity teach us? That when it comes to BYOD, it pays not to be overly strict with how the devices can be used in the class, as greater freedom allows teachers to work with students to develop the best uses for technology for their subject matter and teaching style.

BYOD requires much more than just changing tech policies and can sometimes mean overhauling the curriculum and spending money training teachers, though it does help students create a more personal and memorable learning experience.

As needs change over time, addressing them might mean switching devices (remaking the choice). As schools progress in their technology implementation, they may find that their needs have changed, and should not hesitate to change devices as their understanding of their students’ needs develops. This seasonal view of devices (rather than “device as school identity”) is essential to helping schools move forward, meet their current students’ needs, and keep the curriculum relevant and timely for the future. A focus on pedagogy and key technology skills will transfer from one device to another, making the shift easier; a focus on being a device expert, or mastering device specific mechanics, will not. Students will graduate into a world that will demand technological fluency, the ability to move and process information across various platforms and devices.

blended learning and is ideally managed as teacher-led and student-centred.

During three years at The Southport School in Queensland, Australia, my colleagues and I managed to produce significant changes in classroom practice via the use of Moodle and the staged introduction of mobile devices to the classroom.

The survey further indicated that most students had 2 or more devices with them in school.

The trickiest of the cracks to get our heads around is the “connected divide,” separating those who are proficient in collaborative, creative and connected social networks and those who are not. It is growing exponentially wider on a daily basis.

People who've heard me talk about middle schools have probably heard me say something like, "this age group has a million legitimate things to worry about every day, and none of them are in our curriculum."

that factory-model schooling was not just ineffective but actually harmful to most students—a message which had been so radical and out of the mainstream twenty years ago, actually sounded very much like the messages of my other guests.

the Internet has become an unparalleled platform for learning, intitiative, participation, productivity, and creativity, almost all of this happens outside of formal educational institutions

technology as a liberating force

We’re going from districts fearing it and blocking it off to welcoming it and making it a major part of their technology plan. We’ll be surprised if a significant portion of districts aren’t using mobile learning inside and outside of schools soon.”

Each educator, each class, each school will have to find the best way to integrate mobile devices based on its student population. The opportunity of using mobile devices and all of its utilities allows educators to reconsider: What do we want students to know, and how do we help them? And what additional benefit does using a mobile device bring to the equation? This gets to the heart of the mobile learning issue: beyond fact-finding and game-playing – even if it’s educational — how can mobile devices add relevance and value to how kids learn?

personalized learning – students owning what they learn.

"Schools embody an industrial model of organization in a postindustrial world, and an authoritarian and hierarchical character in a world where networks and negotiations are increasingly prevalent."

The time has come to stop tinkering with an antiquated model.

YouTube can be used as a valuable teaching tool in the classroom, but while it is chockfull of educational content and useful knowledge – it is also filled to the brim with distracting videos. Cute kittens, people “failing”, music videos, cartoon series, and more – content that distracts kids from using YouTube as a learning channel. Fortunately Google recognized this problem and has launched a solution called YouTube for Schools.

How My School Is Transitioning to Digital Textbooks: Organizing (Step 1 of 5)

This fall, Burlington High School will transition to a 1:1 school exclusively with the iPad 2. One of the goals of this initiative is to slowly transition curriculum and textbooks to ePub format. ePub file format allows anyone to create a file that is readable on an iOS device or Kindle like a book

In today’s Internet age, not having a social media understanding or even more importantly, a yearning for it, can spell trouble in the job market.

There’s always going to be a demand for an adult to be leading child instruction. They’re needed for the feedback piece, or the compassion piece, or the guidance piece. Besides, parents will want that; they feel most comfortable with that.

The program has to be mission-driven.

Right now, we’re in a murky, gray area when it comes to blended learning. In 20 years, we’ll have some tried and true methods. Right now, it’s just messy. And schools have to be okay with messy, with not smooth.

What are the fundamental, basic, non-negotiable principles upon which to base technology in schools? To name a few possibilities:

What are ways that you have had the conversation about technology in your school? And what definition of technology are you using?

Other districts take a different policy stand. While they also use blocking and filtering that federal law requires, their policy is based on the premise that children need to learn how to be responsible users and that such cannot occur if the young person has no real choice. School personnel who take this stand contend that students need to acquire the skills and dispositions of responsible Internet usage and to be held accountable for their behavior. Moreover, those holding this position contend that restrictive school networks may provide more of an appearance of protection than reality since they can be bypassed by students. Schools with less restrictive environments often distinguish between the restrictiveness appropriate for older and younger students since young children may stumble across sites they ought not visit. 

Policies answer the “what” and “why” questions. Procedures answer the “how,” “who,” and “when” questions.