Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) – Why should you try?

                              

It is two thirty in the afternoon. The teacher is introducing a new and important topic and almost all students are attentively looking at and listening to him. A couple of students, however, seem to be somewhere else. A teenage boy is looking at his lap with a silly smile on his face. The teacher suspects this has nothing to do with his class because once he is not telling any jokes at the moment. A teenage girl on the other side has her right hand inside her bag and is also involved in some kind of very important task. The teacher also knows it is not part of the class because he has not assigned any task yet. He has not asked students to make any sort of inventory of the content of their school bags. This scene looks familiar, doesn't it? The two fictional students are definitely texting or checking their social networks on their mobile phones. How can a teacher handle such distractions? How to deal with the handheld devices our students are bringing into our classes? In this post I will try to give some hints on transforming these gadgets into our allies and discuss some of the benefits of doing so.

The first solution that comes to our minds when facing class distractions due to the use of portable devices is banning them completely from coming into the temple of our classrooms. Banning can range from not allowing students to bring such gadgets to class to collecting them upon their arrival to asking students to turn their gizmos off while in class. However, we can ask, is banning handheld devices the solution?

Since students have to carry their mobile phones to communicate with parents, it becomes practically impossible to forbid them from bringing portable devices into the classroom or asking them to turn their gadgets off. The option of collecting mobile devices upon arrival is not very practical either and adds one more throng into the challenging task of achieving effective classroom management.

Banning not being an option, one thing the teacher can do to avoid episodes of disconnection from class is to make a contract with students telling them when they will be allowed to check their phones. One idea would be telling learners to restrict such activities to a time when they are done with written tasks and are waiting for the remainder of the class to finish and do a peer to peer check out. In regard to this rule, it is important to inform them that they should not rush through tasks to have extra time to use their devices. Such rule would mean never using mobile gadgets while the teacher is explaining something or when the class is involved in communication activities.

Once the teacher has addressed the banning issue and established a contract with his or her students, it is time to look into some alternatives to have students use their devices for other things than checking their social networks, chatting in their native language or playing games. Doing so will make them really happy and will probably reduce their craving for using their devices for other things than getting engaged in learning activities while in class.

There are some activities in which a teacher can substitute paper and pencil for a more engaging and fun task done using a mobile device. Writing does not have necessarily to be done in notebooks. Consequently, paragraphs can be written using mobile phones and be sent immediately to the teacher or afterwards for correction. A teacher will probably be surprised with students’ dexterity in using a mobile phone tiny keyboard to write a paragraph or a short message. You can also suggest a tour around the school to investigate or catalog new vocabulary. Images can be used to construct narratives or to simply describe pictured objects. Besides that, learners can record themselves and by doing this improve their pronunciation and intonation once they have the opportunity to play back and see how they sound. As you can see, there are lots of opportunities to use handheld devices in class.

Using students' devices bring many advantages. First, we can say that it solves the logistic and economic problem of having one mobile device for student. Why does the school need to buy these gadgets when students already possess their own. Second, it saves time once the instructor does not need to instruct the class on specific features. Third, it allows diversity instead if the unification of class sets of laptops or tablets. Finally, it sends a strong message of acceptance and inclusion to students once the handheld device they carry with them almost everywhere is being valued by their teacher and transformed into a powerful learning tool.

References:

My colleague Erika Oya and I gave a presentation on the topic of BYOD in Brasilia at The 2^nd Alumni CTJ and IBEU TEFL Conference. See our slides on Prezi 

Hockly,N.(October 2012). Tech-savvy teaching: BYOD. Modern English Teacher, volume 21(number 4). Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/2065524/Tech-savvy_teaching_BYOD