Developing digitally: A secondary school’s progress to BYOD

Abstract

In order to work out how to become a BYOD school, at least one New Zealand secondary school has developed a BYOD implementation plan in order to trial a variety of tools and technologies to discover what works and what doesn’t to suit its educational context. In a fast-changing educational digital landscape, schools increasingly grapple with what it means to learn and teach in a digital context, and the eLearning group in this school decided to experiment with a small group of staff. The subject contexts consisted of foreign languages, sciences, music, mathematics, and Art. A key aspect of the trial was working with an external researcher to support the investigation. The project was in its third year in 2015. During the third year, volunteer teachers incorporated Chromebooks or iPads and had free rein on how these devices were used with students. Experiments included Google Classroom, Edmodo, online interactive physics simulations, music Apps on iPads, or combinations of Apps and web-based tools. This presentation focuses on this third year of the project and fits with the conference theme of Rings around Practice in that it centres on a school wanting to close the gaps between the goal of BYOD and and its implementation. Key findings broadly include: greater confidence in using unfamiliar tools, greater student concentration, greater collaboration among students, and faster learning particularly in the physics classroom and music. Students expressed greater confidence in learning content when learning occurred with these technologies, and teachers felt a guarded sense of satisfaction.