Catlin Tucker, a 9th and 10th grade English language arts teacher, has a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy in her classroom. Students share phones, tablets, iPods, etc., so that everyone has access to mobile technology. Allowing students to work with the tools they actually use to navigate the world and, therefore, the ones with which they are most comfortable, translates into more meaningful, relevant, and engaged learning, says Tucker.
A BYOD policy makes technology that students find relevant available in the classroom, and that technology can help teachers create contexts for more personalized learning. At the same time, if you're new to BYOD policies, opening your classroom to students' own technology can seem chaotic and susceptible to abuse. Here are Tucker's suggestions for moving past these fears and using technology to meet students' interests and readiness levels.
Use Devices to Challenge and Engage
When I hear that devices are a distraction in a classroom, the first question that comes to mind is, How are students using the devices? It's hard for me to imagine that devices are a distraction if students are challenged and engaged.
My students use devices for a wide range of tasks: to document their work, review concepts, research topics, crowdsource information, capture interviews, communicate with classmates, record videos, and create digital stories. The work is almost always collaborative and requires that students work as a team to accomplish a task. This collaboration makes it hard for a student to be off task because the group relies on each member to contribute to the final product.
While reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, I asked students to track the changes that caused society to shift from reading books and valuing literature to burning books. They worked in small groups to identify the factors that contributed to this transition and created a flowchart. Then they worked as a team to create an RSA animation video to illustrate this transition.
Each group worked on a shared Google Document to write a script describing how society changed over time. One student, the artist for the group, visually depicted the change by drawing on a whiteboard. Another student filmed the artist as he or she drew. Another student completed a dramatic reading of the script. Once the film and audio were captured on devices, the students put the pieces together using iMovie. The dynamic videos they created clearly illustrated this complex societal shift.
These types of activities take learning to the next level. Instead of listening to me describe this transition from reading to burning books in Bradbury's futuristic society, students were challenged to think deeply about why society had changed. Then they had to work together to create a clear explanation of this transition using the tools we had on hand—devices, whiteboards, and dry-erase pens. I gave the students complete autonomy on how to execute the task, which also increased their excitement about the assignment.
Devices should drive engagement, pique curiosity, and encourage creativity. If teachers design the activity well, students will be too absorbed in what they're doing to be off task. To that end, it's important for teachers to articulate a clear product, define a realistic time frame, tap into students' interests, and encourage conversation and collaboration.
At the start of the school year, I designed a lesson focused on academic vocabulary that combined these elements. I explained what the words explicit, implicit, and inference meant. At the time, we were reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which takes place in the 1930s. For students to review those academic terms and have an opportunity to practice using them, I put them into small groups and asked them to explore an issue of Life magazine from 1935. (Google Books has an online collection of magazines that students can look through for free.)
Once students were in their groups, I asked them to use one device to explore the magazine. I encouraged them to discuss the explicit and implicit information they found in it. Then using another device, they posted all the inferences they were able to make about the time period, gender roles, race relations, diet and health, and political issues. They posted their inferences to a shared Padlet wall so they could see one another's posts in real time.
This activity was successful for several reasons. First, my students love all things visual. They were fascinated by the pictures in Life. Obviously, life in 1935 was wildly different from their own experiences, a fact that also fascinated them. Second, the objective of the activity was clear; they knew they had to post their inferences to our shared Padlet wall. Finally, they had 20 minutes to complete the activity, which was enough time for them to accomplish the task without getting bored or wandering off task.
This more social and engaging approach to learning also enables teachers to capitalize on the collective intelligence in the room. Students have more opportunities to learn from one another, and they begin to value their peers as resources in the classroom.