The Final Hoorah! Directed Reading

The time has come for my last lap around the sun!

I am very excited to have the opportunity to finish off my Masters of Education program with a directed reading course.  My peers Jenn, Andres, Jorie, Elizabeth, and Jayme-Lee and I have taken a variety of classes together, mostly with Alec Couros as our technology guru/professor.  I am thankful to these awesome colleagues for inviting me to be a part of this directed reading course where we each get to research and study specific areas that we want to learn and improve upon within our own niche areas within this crazy profession.

Photo Credit: Dizain

I am looking forward to investigating the concept of integrating technology into a middle years setting through the method of a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) plan.  Over the last few years I have been a technology proponent within my school and I have openly suggested to the students to BYOD without any real plan as to how to effectively deal with the possible issues that my arise.

Luckily I have not had that many issues, but I have had many frustrations along the way.  I have not come across a situation where the technology brought in has been damaged, lost, or stolen.... Yet.  This semester I plan on looking into the negatives around BYOD policies in an effort to develop a plan for effective use for the upcoming school year.  I have been told that my school division is going to be implementing a board BYOD policy to help aid in the technology gap that is occurring with more and more teachers within schools and the division wanting to incorporate technology into their teaching.

I also teach in a community that is very involved in their children education and typically have great questions around the purpose of new programs/incentives.  Personally I feel I am close to going to a paperless classroom.  I believe this is possible, but one of my main hurdles is going to be ensuring that every student in all my classes has an equal opportunity to utilize an effective device throughout the day.  With the community I work in, the board rolling out and new policy I believe I need to have as much knowledge around the topic before I am able to justify going paperless.  Therefore is the basis for my desire to research the concept of BYOD and mainly the negatives behind what may, or will occur with this concept.  Thankfully Jenn suggested a great article to get me started, and Alec shared Alberta's BYOD policy which are going to be some great starting points for me.

Through my groups conversation last night Alec talked about incentivising technology.  He was talking about it from the administration:teacher perspective but it made me think about it from the teacher:student perspective.  Mainly the questions of: why am I going to do this, who is this benefiting, and how will this affect my students learning.

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons 

I am looking forward to the journey this semester will take me on.  I am hoping that I will still be willing to attempt a paperless classroom in the fall, but I will let my learning take the lead and see where it takes me.