EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL BYOD ADOPTION CONCEPT TO
Generation” to describe the new group of students coming into universities. These students are fundamentally different than educators have seen before. Their study states the Net Generation “have spent their lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age.” . The study also found out that “that this generation of students prefer receiving information rapidly, have a low tolerance for lectures, prefer active rather than passive learning and rely heavily on communication technologies to access information.
The current generation of students has grown up with technology and want to use it in every aspect of their daily lives including school. They categorize themselves as highly technologically literate and always carrying a mobile phone and a USB drive with them. The research is significant in that it explores how and where the students use this mobile technology. Students are looking to use the latest technologies, and the survey in this article strongly indicates students are seeking to use technologies that provide access, efficiency and connectedness [7].
According to Atkins [8], content specialist at Top Hat states that student’s devices have become an integral part of their lives, and naturally will continue to become an integral part of their educational experience. The technological standards students have continued to increase. This transformation can influence every aspect of the learning experience for students, staff, and administrators alike. BYOD educational technology has far fewer barriers to entry compared to traditional hardware response systems, is more affordable for students, and provides more robust features to educators. This is the way the lecture is moving and there is no turning back.
Hwang and Chang [9] conducted a similar study that proposed a formative assessment-based approach to mobile learning. Pre and post-tests were developed, and it was concluded that the two groups did not differ significantly before learning the subject unit. However, the experimental group had significant improvements in both their learning interest and their learning attitude after participating in the learning activity, these result findings revealed the possibility that many computer- assisted learning strategies with the use of mobile technologies have the potential for enhancing the learning achievements of students.
Table 1. Student’s characteristics of 21st century learning environment
Mobile Students live in a world with anytime, anywhere access to information at their fingertips Collaborative Technology has provided our
students with a social, collaborative world. They thrive on teamwork and figuring things out with their friends.
Connected Today’s students want to connect with others in real time through social media and mobile devices.
Multimedia Today’s students are equal parts consumer and creator. They download and view audio and video, then create their own to upload and share with others.
They are used To have multimedia tools at their fingertips, and they are adept at using these tools to express their creativity.
Constantly Changing
Constant change requires independent learners with new skills for changing work environments: critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication
Physical and Virtual Learning Spaces
Students live in a world where they can learn anywhere, any time and from anyone.
3. How does a BYOD classroom work?
Students bring their own devices to class to use as educational tools. To make best use of these devices, educators may use a cloud-based classroom engagement platform, making it possible to surpass the hardware requirements of traditional clicker solutions. Then, educators prompt students to answer questions, engage in discussions, and even anonymously submit questions instead of having students face the anxiety of raising their hands. Students then simply send in their answers from their personal phone, laptop, or tablet. This method allows educators to instantly start engaging students with much less effort and at a much lower cost to students.
Since many schools have the infrastructure to support wireless devices, allowing students to bring their own devices gives educators access to immediate technology integration in the classroom.
The access advantage anytime, anywhere, any device gives BYOD a significant benefit over more traditional technology integration models. Often, this increasing demand for school technology coincides with decreasing school budgets.
According to Mark Ray [10], With BYOD, teachers no longer have to be concerned that their
classroom libraries are not diverse enough to meet students’ needs, nor do they have to stress about spending their own money to fill their shelves.
Students no longer have to wait weeks to check out a library book; their PDAs make texts instantly downloadable and affordable.
At the secondary level, BYOD opens up strategies for engaging students in learning they might otherwise have missed. Rather than hand out packets, students would consider drudgery, teachers can have them use smartphones to scan QR codes that link to online resources, videos, short articles, art, music all to activate or establish their background knowledge.
Using devices to explore topics, students are no longer confined to an outdated textbook.
Additionally, students can use their devices to summarize their learning (solidifying it in their memory). Teachers can more quickly collect formative data to assess student learning [9].
Through apps such as Socrative and Padlet, a teacher can poll the class, gather information about their prior knowledge, or facilitate students writing a reflection about what they learned that day. At the elementary level, students can use their devices during independent reading time. They can learn vocabulary through online tools, view documents they have created, or look up information for easy reference. They too can blog, using safe platforms such as Kidblog. They can create visual stories through Powtoon and Animoto, or narrative books through Storybird. Mostly, they can bring their learning to life by making it more interactive and timely than a worksheet could ever be [11].
Allowing for BYOD in schools provides students with the choice they crave as learners, the audience they need to become writers, and the opportunities to be voracious, independent readers [12].
4. The Benefits of BYOD in Classroom 4.1 Student participation increases.
Students like using their personal devices and they keep their beloved mobile devices on them at all times, and are not just using them to communicate with friends or download music, but can be utilized in the class so that they become engaged in whatever it is that they’re doing with their personal devices including classwork, which becomes even more interactive when everyone has access to technology [13]. BYOD technology in the classroom allows students that may not regularly participate in class give feedback and participate a lot more. Activity helps the student become engaged in the lesson and retain more information.
4.2 Learning becomes student-driven.
Teaching in the digital age is becoming less about directly transferring knowledge and more
about showing students how to sift through vast amounts of information to find the knowledge they need. BYOD has changed the environment of learning and teaching model. With the technology they are using for BYOD, students have more authority over their own learning. They can pose questions and do research instead of just listening to the lectures as well as the ability to access the plethora of information the internet has to offer.
Instead of just the traditional style where the teacher does all the teaching and student just tries to retain it, students can learn on their own and actually search, gather, and absorb the information and not just regurgitate it.
4.3 Student collaboration and communication increases.
Collaboration is key to engagement in today’s classrooms. The students use technology to communicate with their peers and with me. A BYOD initiative can provide students with far greater opportunities to interact virtually with teachers and work with other students on assignments, projects and content creation. BYOD students can use mobile devices to work together in groups. The teacher can then choose which groups work to show to the class on a larger display.
Educators can even use games and other interactive learning to get students involved
4.4 Prepares students for the real world Students will be using mobile devices in the workplace. It is important to teach them how to use these devices in the correct way to best prepare them for the future. You need to keep your students up to speed with what’s going on in the real world so they can become successful in the workplace. By working on their own mobile devices students learn proper decision making and take responsibility for their own work and productivity.
4.5 Cost Savings.
Although BYOD is really about delivering education in new ways, saving money is an important objective. With the students using their own mobile devices in the classroom, schools can save money on technology costs. The institutions or school does not need to spend a fortune trying to keep up with all the coolest technology that can be used for education these days, if students are allowed to use their own mobile devices.
4.6 Personalized instruction.
The flexibility of personalized devices supports different learners with different needs, helping students to identify learning styles and skills that will make them lifelong learners. By allowing the students to accompany along with interactive and multimedia lessons on their mobile devices, will afford them more control over the
pace at which they learn. . With more engaged and motivated students, BYOD has the potential to positively affect educational outcomes [14].
Students spend countless hours outside the classroom on their mobile devices and having said that the students may use their devices as engaging learning tools in the classroom. Then, they can easily bring their homework, educational games, and projects with them. Everything they need to continue learning outside the classroom can be accessed anytime, anywhere, with the swipe of a finger.
4.7 A new way of learning.
Incorporating student-owned mobile computing devices into the curriculum has helped the educators transform the direct instruction methods into project-and inquiry-based learning opportunities [16]. This pedagogical approach helps students learn by doing and gives them ownership and authorities of their education. The current generation of students has grown up with technology and want to use it in every aspect of their daily lives including school. They have an expectation that the same technology they use at home will be available at school too. In fact, they use technology to study or work on homework assignments and they believe that mastering the latest technology skills will improve their educational and career opportunities.
5. Educational Impact
The adoption of BYOD in the classroom has changed the roles of both teacher and students.
Teachers are moving towards a facilitator role as students take more authorities of their learning and share what they have learned using integrative technology tools. The main idea of BYOD is to embrace the student as key contributors to their learning experience, more ownership and tend to perform better when they are given responsibilities.
Utilizing the personal devices like tablets, smartphones, and portable workstations which is many of the students already own, BYOD is conveying learning to the 21st century and giving students a trailer of how their future work environments will work. BYOD enables students to be a self- directed leaners and more responsible for their leaning experience.
BYOD also allows students to tap into their individual learning preferences according to their learning style. According to [18] successful BYOD program models have been shown to boost test scores (achievement) significantly, with increased student engagement and motivated learning.
With BYOD, educators may have an authorities to take full advantage of common features that are found in most mobile devices which is related to the learning activities such as data management and cloud tools (Dropbox), audio
for podcasting and radio broadcasts (Podcatchers), web-based applications for classroom polling and quick tests (Socrative), or video for creating multimedia products (Powtoon). Other uses of mobile devices include storytelling, QR codes and digital language learning. It is believed that more newer technologies constantly emerging and thus making BYOD a valuable and lasting solution for technology integration [11].
6. Challenges and Considerations of BYOD One of the main issues and challenge on BYOD adopted relates to the consideration of the technical aspects. An increase in the number of mobile devices presents a growing demand for bandwidth, requiring schools to devote a large amount of their BYOD budget, to infrastructure investment for internet networking [15], bandwidth capacity that can accommodate the increased use of mobile devices, type of applications that can support BYOD, cloud computing, security and standard of Procedures for recharging personal devices [1].
Another consideration for BYOD is the ongoing professional development and extensive training for staff members who are responsible for implementing the program and procedures on a daily basis [16] & [17]. Teachers may be more comfortable with a traditional technology model, which offers controlled, filtered and exclusive environments for mobile learning. Teachers need and deserve the time and training to be experts in managing and instructing with the tools they are expected to use in their trade [12].
Although mobile devices have their advantages, such as anytime-anywhere learning and on-demand communication, there are limitations to the features and usability of these devices. Small screen size, Internet browsing speed, battery life, software availability, and support for certain multimedia files are just a few of the considerations. As a result, mobile devices are best used as companion devices to supplement the work done on regular computers.
7. Conclusion
With the convergence of widespread broadband and the growth of powerful, platform independent web-based tools, BYOD has finally arrived as an effective educational alternative to other plans that require expensive purchasing and maintenance. Hence, BYOD global trend as the next stage in the evolution of schooling as an inevitable and preferable phenomenon that will provide students with the skills they will require for life in the technological age. Today’s younger generation is using mobile technologies on a regular basis, and these technologies should be explored for classroom use to enhance student
learning whenever possible. Viewed within a realistic perspective of both its benefits and limitations, BYOD can provide a workable solution for the many schools seeking to upgrade their educational technology.
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