BYOD Case Study: George Spencer Academy

Tween Cell Phone TextingGeorge Spencer Academy is a mixed secondary school in Nottingham, England, with 1350 students aged 11-18. Although it is located in a large town, it has only a small proportion of students who are eligible for free school meals.

The school decided to go down the BYOD road in order to be able to explore the potential of personal devices without incurring costs of purchase, training or technical support. The idea also fits very well with the school’s vision, which is concerned with giving a personalised learning experience to all students.

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Pictures as stimulii

girl and trainI always carry a camera around with me – as well as my phone. Why? Because you never know when you might see something interesting enough to use as a stimulus for an article. And why both? Because each one gives better results in different lighting conditions. Interestingly, my camera, which boasts a Leica lens, copes less well than  my phone in the dark – which is why I used my camera for the night street scenes shown here. I like the slightly out-of-focus effect, and the fact that in one of them the darkness is almost overwhelming. I think if you teach you should encourage your students to always carry a camera of some description with them at all times. And if you are a Head of Department, encourage your staff to do the same. Here are my reasons.

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What’s the story?

Story hour.How I hate the word “narrative”! At least, I detest the way it has been usurped by smart-suited political advisers who say things like “We need a new narrative”.

But sometimes, like now, I get what they are talking about, though I prefer to use the word “story”. And my question is: what is the story, what is the whole experience, of ICT in your school?

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Mobile Learning: A Visit to Flitch Green Academy

Flitch Green (4)Although I visited Flitch Green to talk about technology – specifically, iPads and mobile learning – I discovered that as in any good school the technology serves the vision of the school, which is about learning.

Flitch Green Academy is somewhat unprepossessing – at least from the outside. But once you go through the door, it’s a different story.

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You must be joking, right?

fp80108-04I don’t know if many people ever look at the categories that blog posts have been assigned to. I know I do sometimes, especially if I’m looking for a particular article or type of article. But, in the interests of making people’s lives as easy as possible as far as finding articles on the ICT in Education website is concerned, I not only assign articles to categories but sometimes make up new categories in order to be even more specific. Thus it was that I recently created a new category called Really?

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Recommended reading

ReadingHere is a selection of online articles that I think worth reading – some of them are my own (he says modestly), but others are others’! They cover a wide range of topics, including the flipped classroom, Bring Your Own Technology, what happens in an internet minute, up and coming conferences and others.

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BYOD Case Study: Finborough School

student_ipad_school - 143Here is an interesting case study of how a small school has successfully introduced BYOD with a particular group of pupils.

Finborough School is an independent, ie private, all-through school, ie age range 2-18, in a rural English setting. It has 274 pupils.

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Mini-review of the Motivating Educators, Inspiring Learners Conference

russell“Well”, said Elaine as I bounced in last Wednesday evening. “You’ve got your mojo back.” This was quite true. Having spent a few hours reading various articles about why things can’t be done, or how there could be dire consequences if they were, I wasn’t in much of a frame of mind to attend a conference, especially one which seemed to be ‘motivational’. Quite frankly, when I’m feeling miserable the last thing I want is someone trying to cheer me up.

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BYOD Case Study: Archbishop Lanfranc School

Phone LaseredThe school is moving towards a totally cloud-based system using mostly mobile technology. Therefore BYOD will become another facet of this by allowing students to use mobiles when appropriate, in addition to the kit provided by the school.
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BYOD: What’s in a name?

Hand Holding a Mobile PhoneWhen I started to look at the whole Bring our Own Device phenomenon, I thought it was all pretty simple. Mal Lee and EdFutures have drawn a distinction between BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and BYOT (Bring our Own Technology). These are helpful, but unfortunately things ain’t that simple.

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Computers in Classrooms new edition out now!

blog readingThe latest edition of Computers in Classrooms, the e-newsletter for those with a professional interest in educational ICT, has just gone out. It’s a special conference edition. And one of the conferences is offering subscribers a 50% reduction in the entry fee!

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