BYOD Equity Panel at #SXSWedu 2014

On March 5, 2014, I was privileged to moderate and participate on a panel on Bridging the Digital Divide with BYOD Equity at the SXSWedu conference in Austin, Texas.

The panelists were a true joy to plan and present with. I highly suggest you follow each of them on Twitter to learn more about best practices in educational technology. My fellow panelists were:

• Jessica Herring, 7th Grade English teacher and practitioner of BYOD in the classroom at Benton Middle School outside of Little Rock, Arkansas
• Dr. Tim Clark, Coordinator of Instructional Technology for Forsyth County Schools in Georgia. Forsyth County Schools was an early trailblazer in BYOD initiatives and is looked to nationwide as a resource for how to implement BYOD and implement it well.
• Dr. Michael Mills, Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning at the University of Central Arkansas. Michael keeps his hand in K-12 education by partnering with schools and teachers on BYOD integration projects. He also conceived of this panel and brought us all together to participate on it, for which I am truly thankful.

What I loved about this panel is it stretched the conversation about BYOD Equity beyond just devices. Of course access to devices is important when we are asking families to send technology to school with their children, but there are so many more equity issues involved. Some of the topics our panel touched on were:

• Internet access outside of school
• Support for and understanding of BYOD from school and district administrators
• Acceptance and sound implementation of BYOD by classroom teachers
• Ongoing, robust professional development for teachers
• Clear communication with families of students
• Support from the greater community in which the school or district operates

Here is an audio recording of the panel:

I am thankful that my Central Texas edtech colleague Diana Benner attended our panel and posted notes she took during the discussion to her blog. 

As I looked through Tweets later on the day of the session, this one really stood out because it was such a high compliment and made me realize it wasn't just my biased perception that the panel had gone well:

.@AquiAmigo @JessicaRae929 @BYOTNetwork @EdTechSandyK Best panel seen on BYO in 3 yrs, new thoughts are great to hear.
— Dave Saltmarsh (@Dave_Saltmarsh) March 5, 2014

I also used Storify to try collect Tweets which used our #BYODequity hashtag during the panel. Below is a slideshow of the Tweets I collected.

This conversation was just a beginning. I hope all of the documentation of the session which I am posting here can serve as a starting-place for more detailed conversations which lead to solutions for getting powerful learning technologies into the hands of students.

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Education in a World of Social and Technological Change #SXSWedu

Notes from concurrent session, SXSWedu 2012

S. Craig Watkins, Associate Professor of Radio, TV, and Film, The University of Texas at Austin
theyoungandthedigitial.com
@scraigwatkins

After grad school, Watkins began immersing himself in the way young people use media. Trying to understand their  perspectives and sensibilities they bring to digital media. Recently he has been working with the McArthur Foundation on how young people's adoption of technology changes the way they live and learn. How are their learning lives evolving?

Teens between the ages of 12 and 17 are almost universally online. Previously via laptop computers, but more recently via mobile devices.

Social media has become central to their (and our) everyday lives.

The Digital Tipping Point - moment in a young person's life when they migrate to the digital world. As you get closer to high school, there starts to be enormous amount of pressure to becomed part of the online community. This pressure is now starting at younger and younger ages.

Preschoolers are using iPads and other handheld devices. They will have very different expectations of what a book will be and what learning will be even as they enters Kindergarten! Think of these 21st Century kids entering 20th Century classrooms...

The Digital Edge - Watkins is trying to understand role of digital media in lives of kids on the margins of digital access - second language homes, low socioeco environments, etc? Was inspired by the concept of digital divide - technology rich vs. technology poor.

Kids who we assume lack access to technology are increasingly getting access through mobile devices and resources in their commmunities. Studies show Black and Hispanic students are spending more time online than their Anglo counterparts, and their primary means of access is mobile.

Mobile is bridging the access divide, but the question of whether it is bridging the divide in terms of quality is not as easy to answer.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out - Friendship-driven and interest-driven access (Ito et al 2010) Found a large group of kids primarily went online for social reasons. Another group was found to be going online to pursue interests and passions. The passion-driven kids were using digital media to enrich their own learning. Example: A young woman receiving critique of her fan fiction online began using some of the skills she learned back in her other classes in school.

Connected Learning Project (need to Google this) - examples of projects schools are doing

How can we bring interests students develop outside of school into the classroom to leverage it for learning?


How can we leverage the peer culture in education?


How can we create more dynamic, more robust experiences in the classroom?


Learning gaps are not only shaped by what happens in school, but by what happens in their after-school lives.

Design Principles for Connected Learning:

• Openly networked
• Shared purpose
• Production-centered

Look up YOUMEDIA - a public library based program to help students explore their interests.

What happens when we block social media in schools? We block them from some of their connectivity.

NOTE: Large gap in notes here thanks to an antivirus update that brought my netbook to its knees...

When asked what they wish their computer s could do that they don't currently do, kids answered with things like:

• I want to go into the computer to visit other places (illustrates blur of line between in person and virtual worlds)
• I want to make my own game (1/3 of kids responded with a desire to create)

Students seem to have a design disposition. How can we leverage that? How do we craft design/learning spaces that are student-centered? Spaces that are hands-on, active, and dynamic. Spaces that are inquiry-based. Watkins is working with schools on this.

In areas of extreme poverty, such as Brazil, these kinds of learning designs are essential. (Leadbeater & Wong, 2010). Learning needs to be related to real world questions and problems. Making kids entrepreneurial, creative, and inventive. 

Concluding Thoughts:

Learning has to happen across all the nodes and networks that connect us to the world we live in.

Majority of births in this country are now happening among historically minority groups. Students coming into our schools are much more ethnically diverse than they ever have been. How can education respond to this? How can we respond to the diversity?

We need to understand the digital divide as a literacy challenge rather than an access challenge.