BYOD in Education: First Steps

Part 4 of a 5 Part Series

The first steps in designing a BYOD (or even a 1 to 1) strategy should include looking at what pieces of your curriculum are currently delivered digitally, what your teachers have requested to add to their curriculum, what you have found as a district that you would like to implement, and what other districts are using in their classes.

Forming a technology committee is also a good first step in understanding what the curriculum currently offers and what can be added to enhance the quality and depth of what your district is providing. Getting varied opinions on what is out there can help in designing the future goals for the teachers and technology staff. This includes choosing digital content that works with a wide variety of devices so there is a minimum of restrictions in the list of allowed devices at your district. Does the service work on an iPad as well as an Android tablet? Is the App available on all platforms? These all need considered when choosing content.

Another important first step is including in your strategic plan a method of managing both district devices as well as consumer devices so that both have the same experience. If you are using apps, how will they be delivered to the consumer device?

The final first step involves your district policy. Has it been updated to include the level of rights a district has on a consumer device if it is used on the school premises?  It has to be well defined what rights the IT staff and teachers have (or don’t have) on the device so there is no confusion when the device doesn’t function properly or needs an application installed. In the cases of laptops and netbooks, does the device have the latest anti-virus?  Can the district IT staff install another browser?

– John Sanderbeck, Questeq Infrastructure Engineer

Read Part 1 of this BYOD series here.
Read Part 2 of this BYOD series here.
Read Part 3 of this BYOD series here.