A new school year and thinking about BYOD

It's September and we have returned to school.  The first few weeks of school for a technology integration teacher can be a little overwhelming.  Summer is wonderful and relaxing but we jump right back in at a very quick pace when we return to school.

This year I am excited to see my district will be planning a BYOD Initiative.  I will be working with a group of high school teachers to establish our goals around teachers bringing in devices and planning for student use later in the year.  I have been watching several school across the state move in this direction.

Last spring I visited Burlington High School, they did a 1:1 Plan using iPads.  Check our their blog post.  It's Time to Collaborate on our 1:1 Plan - Who Wants In?  They created "The BHS 1:1 Wiki".  As a person that  is about to start this process is great to see the results from other schools. I was impressed with the thoughtful planning around using the same device, getting everyone on the same page and most importantly how teacher collaboration has inspired other schools.  Burlington has opened their doors to help teachers see first-hand how embrace new technology to work with students.  The new Grafton High School appears to have modeled their ipad implementation after Burlington.  Another school that used a BYOD model was the Reading Public Schools.  Their BYOD initiative was presented at the MassCUE Leadership conference and had a great team approach to the implementation.  A few members from my school attended a session this month " Discover how to make your 1:1 computing initiatives a definitive success" hosted by http://www.customonline.com/onetoone.html. The Keynote,"Leading the Effort" was presented by  Patrick Larkin and George Couros. As always, they did a great job articulating the transformation in their own schools and their approach for implementation. I have followed both George and Patrick on twitter for several years and spending a day learning from them was inspiring.

I will be preparing a survey for teachers to join our school BYOD Initiative and begin the process of determining our next steps.  Stay tuned for more!