BYOT Kicks Off
Written on 4:33 PM by Unknown
When we returned from Spring Break, six of our teachers were ready to embark on a learning journey with their students. These teachers were piloting our District's Bring Your Own Technology program and we were very excited about what learning this would leads us to experience with our students.
When I chose the teachers to work as our pilot team, I wanted people who would take a few risks, trust their students to focus on learning and were not afraid to make some mistakes. One thing I wanted to avoid was having all six be the most tech savvy teachers in the building. I wanted to have a balance of teachers with tech expertise and those without it. One of the best things to happen so far has been seeing these teachers excitedly sharing activities and obstacles with each other. Even though two of them are the only teachers on their grade level team working with the pilot, they all are working together.
I visited a few of these classrooms during their first BYOT-related activities. Seeing students collaborating in @Socrative's Space Race and enthusiastically answering questions to move their ships was a great start to our plan. I've also seen classes using a variety of devices to research for class activities.
We're only in the second week, but I can already tell that students are engaged and beginning to see great learning opportunities. I'm very excited to see where it will go as the quarter continued. I know this has already affected my view of teaching and this will be evident in tomorrow's School Improvement Planning activities. Though I may find some pitfalls along the way, I'm excited to use some of the instructional practices with my teachers that they can immediately translate into their work in their classrooms.
