BYOD in Education: What, Why and How

Part 1 of a 5 Part Series

BYOD (Bring your Own Device) and BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) are popular acronyms that have been on everyone’s mind over the past couple years. The terms basically mean the consumerization of IT whereas the student (or teacher) uses their own personal phone, tablet, laptop, MAC, or PC to connect to school resources. This could be using a wired connection but is more likely to be on a wireless connection.

This is not an old concept, and has been adopted in businesses for a few years now. It has become more widely discussed (and haphazardly adopted) in some schools as their district budgets are cut, and schools try and meet the requirements of the students and teachers. Concepts such as blended learning are not easily adopted without having enough devices for each student and teacher, and with the recent severe budget constraints, schools are struggling with getting enough equipment to fulfill that need.

The idea of a one to one ratio of device to user is far beyond the reach of some school districts. BYOD fills that need by leveraging the devices a student or teacher already own, but with the adoption of BYOD comes a litany of other problems which I will try and delve into as part of this series. The stance of “no consumer devices allowed” that many schools have adopted in the past is no longer an acceptable answer.

– John Sanderbeck, Questeq Infrastructure Engineer