BYOD - Bring it On!

This summer, the installation of wireless in our schools opened up doors that previously only occupied our dreams. At this time, our schools are allowed to choose how this new BYOD environment looks in our buildings. After a great deal of conversation within our school leadership team, our school decided to embrace BYOD. The possibilities are endless, but we wanted to ensure that our staff and students are ready for this. Ok, let's be honest, students are ready, but now I think our staff is ready too.

After establishing some basic guidelines, we developed a brief overview about BYOD and how it should look and function at our school. The presentation I prepared for our staff can be seen below.

 

The Flat Rock Freeze emerged from a conversation with my husband. He expressed concern about students being able to communicate via their devices during class. My suggestion to him was to have a hands-off moment where students place their devices on the desk and remove their hands from those devices. This allows the teacher the opportunity to see what students are doing at random intervals during the class. I mentioned this idea to my principal who felt this was a great strategy for teachers to implement into their own classrooms. In putting together this presentation, I felt that we needed a catchy name for this and the Flat Rock Freeze emerged. 
I have also partnered with one of our guidance counselors to get the word out about BYOD. Together we have worked to educate students about the proper way to use the equipment and will eventually be incorporating lessons on interacting with others in this digital environment. Together we created this video for students. 

This was shown to all homeroom classes and was accompanied by a series of discussion questions. Overall, we had a very positive response to our first focused lesson on BYOD. 
Please share what you are doing with BYOD at your school. We are constantly looking for more information to improve what we are doing.