Is the Time Right for BYOT?

Making use of the technology many students bring to class each day is a touchy subject. Many educators view it as a distraction and even more see it as unfair to those students who cannot afford electronic gadgets, such as an iPhone or Kindle. But that could be changing.

Eric Sheninger, principal of New Milford High School in New Jersey and education writer for The Huffington Post, makes a case for the idea of “Bring Your Own Technology” in a SmartBlog post,  claiming a BYOT program is a way to “leverage a variety of devices that many students already have.” His school piloted a BYOT initiative for seniors, and then expanded it because he felt the program provided real value for both students and teachers.

Sheninger found that students need to view their devices as mobile learning tools and that the school had to adopt language to promote that notion. It’s also important to have professional development and resources available to teachers so they can create lessons specifically connected to the device.

The New Milford BYOT program increased access to technology and encouraged students to use their devices for educational purposes outside the classroom. Acceptable-use policies were required, but it was found those policies could be aligned with policies already in place a school’s discipline code.

In addition, Sheninger knows equity is a large issue facing BYOT and agrees schools should provide for all. But he also considers it an excuse for not moving forward.

“Instead of bashing BYOT and saying how and why it won’t work or is unfair, we would be best served to brainstorm ways in which it can become an educational component of our schools,” he wrote. “The excuses to write off BYOT only serve to undermine the students that we are tasked with educating.”

Cool Hardware Won't Win Educational Tablet War

There’s little debate about the potential electronic devices have in the realm of learning. The problem comes in realizing that potential, says to Mehdi Maghsoodnia, CEO of Rafter, the parent company of BookRenter.com, in this guest post written for Forbes.com.

Cost is one large stumbling block to reaching that potential. At this point, the cost of the device and the educational content assigned doesn’t ensure a savings for students compared to printed textbooks, which is a primary reason why e-books remain less than 5% of all textbook sales.

There is also the issue of supporting the device and getting educators to use digital content effectively.

“Simply putting digital books on a device is not enough to truly digitalize education,” Maghsoodnia writes. “In order to make real inroads at colleges and universities, devices must be accessible for students, and adopted by their professors and administrators.”

Becoming the device of choice for education will not be a race to the coolest features or content. It will be a race to solve the problems of cost and scale to help institutions find their way into the digital future, according to Maghsoodnia.

Lexington Passes New "E-Literacy" Test

Priceonomics, a San Francisco online firm that offers price-searching and price comparisons, recently posted on its site results of its “e-literacy” study in the United States.

It turns out that Lexington, KY, and Ann Arbor, MI, are the “most electronically literate places in America,” based on Priceonomics’ database of eight million electronics for sale by city. The company looked at the sales figures of Amazon Kindles in each city, then found the results didn’t change when sales of the Nook e-reader were examined. The data also suggest dedicated e-readers are not a big part in the total landscape of consumer electronics and sales of the Kindle barely register on the resale market that Priceonomics tracks.

One thing that did stand out was that major metropolitan cities, such as San Francisco and Seattle, were soundly beaten by midsized cities in the Midwest and South when it comes to e-literacy.

Washington, D.C., was the largest city in the Top 10. Washington was also named the most literate city in America for the second straight year in a study released earlier this year by Central Connecticut State University. The CCSU research was based on very different criteria, including data on the number of bookstores, library resources, newspaper circulations, and Internet resources for each city. Seattle finished second in the CCSU study, compared to a distant 43rd in the Priceonomics data.

College towns also appear to have an edge when it comes to Kindle ownership, while the Kindle was the least popular in places with the best weather. That brings to mind the old adage about statistics: They can mean pretty much anything you like.