BYOT

BYOD guidelines are just being defined, but one warning must rise above the din, this author says: never, ever, try to gain unauthorized access to an employee's private social networking site.

To ensure students thrive in a technology-rich world, the Le Sueur-Henderson school district has put over 400 iPads in the hands of STEM and middle school students. Next up: BYOD for high school students.

District IT leaders are prioritizing BYOD, assessment readiness, and broadband access for their schools, despite that 80 percent predict flat or declining IT budgets for the upcoming year, according to the Consortium for School Networking’s (CoSN) first-of-its-kind National IT Leadership Survey.

Search YouTube for "York County School Division Young Adult Literature Reviews" and you'll find 56 short videos of Grafton High School students talking about books they recommend to their peers. These tech savvy reviews—a reinvention of the classic book report—are just one example of how the York County School Division's bring your own technology initiative is changing the way students are learning.

As an advocate of project-based learning and student-directed learning, I wanted my students to be able to use computers to create projects using the many different webtools available on the internet. There was just one problem ... I didn't have any working computers in my classroom.

The Consortium for School Networking and global technology company Qualcomm have come together to help schools understand the evolving needs of education networks. Through Designing Education Networks, a project funded by Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach initiative, the partnership aims to provide guidance and resources for district tech decision makers who are developing a wireless infrastructure to support a one-device-per student 24/7 learning environment.

A growing number of schools are adopting a new, controversial approach: asking students to bring their own smartphones, tablets, laptops and even their video game players to class.

This week, Collier County (Fla.) Public School District Superintendent Kamela Patton will lead a team of 38 district officials heading to Georgia to learn more about bring your own technology, or BYOT, through a conference held by the Forsyth County school district, which oversees Kelly Mill Elementary in Cumming, Ga. The 39,000-student district north of Atlanta has a BYOT policy at all 36 of its schools.

During social studies class, eighth-grader Elliott Headden sketches timelines on his iPad 3. While in math class, he writes math problems using his finger on the iPad screen and shows his teacher the calculations and solutions. In science class Headden uses a search engine app to look up quick facts, such as the sugar content in bananas or the population of the world.

Superintendent Deasy wants to give each L.A. Unified student a high-tech device. That would mean 700,000 pieces of digital equipment costing about $450 million, not counting more than $200 million (and possibly double that) to update the campus' wireless Internet service. But his plan needs work.

Deasy's request for a first-phase infusion of $17.4 million in school bond money fell short by one vote.The vote was only advisory, and the school board could still approve the expenditure, but for now Deasy's office says he has no plans to bring it up again, and that's a good idea.