BYOT - Bring Your Own Technology

I have just returned from the Mobile Learning Experience from the Arizona K12 Center and my mind is overflowing with technology wonderment. I cannot capture all that I have learned in a single blog post, so this will be the first of many.

BYOT means Bring Your Own Technology. Students have miniature computers in their pockets most of the time and they can be a great asset if we start putting them to work for us! My campus has an open Wi-Fi network and I would say that it is necessary to becoming a BYOT campus. I'm going to share a lesson that I did with my students today that highlights some of the possibilities of BYOT.

My lesson was called Photocabulary. It's a combination of photography and vocabulary. We have been learning about systems of equations and how to categorize them by the number of times they intersect and the way they intersect. 

• Students had 10 minutes to go out on campus and find examples of parallel, perpendicular, and intersecting lines and take pictures of them.
• Then we came back to class and they shared their photos on a web album.
• Next, we used our clickers to vote on what type of lines were in the pictures and discuss our answers.
• Finally, students completed a free write about their experiences.

I had students pair up or make groups of three to make sure each group had a camera phone. I also brought in my old phones for them to use just in case. This forced them to work as a team since they were sharing a device. I assigned roles of keeping track of the subjects of their pictures and the types of lines they had recorded as well as a role of hunter for those who were looking for more lines while the pictures were being taken, we even had a time keeper role to make sure they finished.

 

I have a Google account so I had students email pictures to my Picasa drop box to share them out. I prepared a QR code with the email and I gave them the actual address in case they couldn't scan the code. Sometimes this process took a little longer, depending on how busy the Wi-Fi was at the time but we passed out clickers at the same time to make it more efficient.

This lesson addressed several of the Mathematical Practices from the CCSS. Students were learning to attend to precision with their academic vocabulary which I assessed by listening to their conversations in their group and with the data collected from their clickers. Students were constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others during our conversations on categorizing the lines and discussing how we felt about the votes. Students used appropriate tools strategically by using their camera phones to support their vocabulary learning. And finally they were modeling with mathematics by finding examples of the math in their every day lives. And of course they were learning the meaning of the three words and what the relationships look like to meet their content standards as well.

This was my first lesson back from the Mobile Learning Experience and I will continue to post my adventures as they come up!