Classroom Technology Integration Configurations

The eye opening part about the budgeting portion of this assignment was the BYOD. While in my classroom practice, there is always technology pedagogy to improve upon, BYOD is one of the places that I have never been able to get to. The students may bring in their own devices from time to time, and then are “supervised” while in class, but a BYOD environment has never been truly used for teaching and learning. Considering the cost saving levels with this environment and how versatile smartphones have become, using them in the classroom for learning would be fantastic. Becoming more tech savvy in the classroom has taken me years of hard work, and my thinking is the BYOD environment will take hard work and time as well. There is now doubt that this kind of teaching and learning environment will be more common in the future, but for now, teaching professionals aren’t sure of the next steps. Now that the smart phone is ubiquitous, what are the next steps for their use in the classroom. 

The configuration using Google Chromebooks was intriguing. The cost is certainly low for the tech one gets, but my knowledge of Google Classroom is limited. My personal experience with Google apps is over 5 years of use, yet most of the apps mimic Microsoft software which would be used mostly for word processing, spreadsheets and presentation type of student work product. There is Youtube, Earth and Hangouts too, but for two years my focus has been the creation of student eBooks to show what they’ve learned. Regardless, this configuration has great merit.

The other configurations are desirable too, in terms of getting tech to students. A 10 iMac environment could certainly be workable, but in today’s world, a one on one environment is essential. A teacher leader would need to use a lot of collaboration techniques with the students The 30 iMacs would be great, although not ideal due to the computer lab arrangement, yet would be cost prohibitive. Also, having classes of 30 students rotate through the lab sounds great, but makes student collaboration and peer to peer cooperation more challenging. 

The one computer and one projector configuration seems quite limiting yet that is exactly how many classrooms are in Northfield Elementary School at the K-2 level. If that was all that was available, one could make it work.