I am SUPER excited that myself, along with one other 5th grade colleague, are about to embark on the BYOT journey! Our HS and MS just began this year, and we are using a county-wide user agreement (so all of that tough paperwork is mostly taken care of - phew)! In the past few years, I have slowly integrated tech more and more... Now that we are the 'pilots' at our school, I am hoping that others will jump on board. A little team (5 folks) from our school visited a wonderful school system that has been implementing BYOT for a little while. If you have not looked through the resources at Forsyth County's website, you are missing out - take a look:
In preparation for the upcoming adventure, I have been thinking a lot about how to manage SO many devices. I will of course model, model, model procedures, as I do at the beginning of the year. One way I will manage the devices are by using signs/posters. The posters I created below immediately show students whether or not they will need their devices for instruction/etc. on any given day. They simply look for the sign and comply. The turtle sign is something that I tweaked a little from a response on the Cornerstone site. When I taught Kindergarten, I had students come in and have "Turtle Time" (invented by Bobbie Starcher - my wonderful mentor teacher), which they put their heads down for a bit while everyone had a turn for water. Well, it made me think of turning the devices over where I can only see their 'shells.' When the turtle time sign is presented with a "Turtle Time" from the teacher, students must turn devices over and give attention to the teacher (kind of like an attention getter saying - 1, 2, 3, eyes on me... ). Hope these work out for YOU!!
You can get these here!
