BYOD and Digital Poverty

[Warwick_Tech]

Dear All,

 

Just wondering how you deal with digital poverty for your BYOD solution? I've been asked to look into using more tech in the classroom and at home, but my experience tells me to avoid laptops, tablets and such like the plague.

 

With the advent of the smartphone I figured an easy solution would be to VLAN a WIFI network off, firewall it all off so you can only access educational apps and 'force' kids to join this.

 

Of course this doesn't help the digitally impoverished, so how do you manage them? Do you have a bank of kit you loan out? If you do, does it have restrictions, or is it a 'free for all' with cheap tablets from c***a?

 

I am always tempted by learnpads https://www.learnpad.com/ and their presence at BETT has grown substantially (when we were allowed outside)

 

But these came with their own bespoke solutions, and as such, bespoke problems.

 

Throwing money at the problem is all well and good, but we need a solution that works.

[mavhc]

Why avoid laptops and tablets?

 

If kids have smartphones then they have internet access via their own cell phone data connection

[hardtailstar]

Why avoid laptops and tablets?

 

If kids have smartphones then they have internet access via their own cell phone data connection

 

If you work in a private school....

 

A lot of kids here dont have data on their mobiles.

[slugshead]

If you work in a private school....

 

A lot of kids here dont have data on their mobiles.

 

Same, we're rural and there's no mobile phone signal, not even enough for SMS

[dhicks]

Just wondering how you deal with digital poverty for your BYOD solution?

 

It's not a problem we have in my current school, but we have found Chromebooks to be nice and easy to manage. For a cheap option for home use (assuming home internet access, which isn't necessarily a correct assumption) an older (possibly donated) laptop reformatted with CloudReady (ChromeOS, but installable on standard laptops and desktops) works well, with the advantage that if a child logs on to any ChromeOS device with their school account then any settings should follow them around, so you can apply filtering and so on if needed.

[keyboards]

Chromebooks 100% here, easy to use, easy to manage, cloud, not ridiculously expensive either

[Rob_D]

Dear All,

Just wondering how you deal with digital poverty for your BYOD solution? I've been asked to look into using more tech in the classroom and at home, but my experience tells me to avoid laptops, tablets and such like the plague.

With the advent of the smartphone I figured an easy solution would be to VLAN a WIFI network off, firewall it all off so you can only access educational apps and 'force' kids to join this.

Of course this doesn't help the digitally impoverished, so how do you manage them? Do you have a bank of kit you loan out? If you do, does it have restrictions, or is it a 'free for all' with cheap tablets from c***a?

I am always tempted by learnpads https://www.learnpad.com/ and their presence at BETT has grown substantially (when we were allowed outside)

But these came with their own bespoke solutions, and as such, bespoke problems.

Throwing money at the problem is all well and good, but we need a solution that works.

 

We're sticking with laptops for students. More sets of higher spec ones in school plus lower powered and DfE ones for PP students to use at home. (but we're in a pretty well off area)

I'd be rather cautious about using student phones. Just because there's no way to "force" them onto the wifi, and it's potentially way too easy to toggle the wifi off while you whatsapp your mates.

Not that you couldn't make it work, but you'd want a pretty bomb proof risk assessment.

[KK20]

we have a bank of kit that is loaned out. However! This is often seen as a poverty marker when we first started and most kids will simply kept "forgetting" their phone rather than own up to not having one. There is a downward spiral after this. It is a known issue in our school but since about 20% now use the loan system it isn't as much of a stigma as was.