The final quarter of last year, our classroom was a limited B.Y.O.D. zone, meaning yes, bring your own device but check it at the door unless we had a purpose for it. I instituted this because I felt we were getting distracted, myself included, we were having a hard time resisting the instant temptations that our smartphones seem to provide for us. So we left them out of the room and the students were just fine with it. I was too. In fact, there were times where I knew that our conversations, our reflections, our thinking traveled to deeper levels because we did not have a device nearby to distract.
Yet, I felt like I had taking the easy way out.
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cross-posted at pernillesripp.com.
Pernille Ripp is the creator of Global Read Aloud Project, co-founder of EdCamp MadWI and the author of Empowered Schools, Empowered Students – Creating Connected and Invested Learners and Passionate Learners – Giving Our Classrooms Back to OurStudents, She teaches seventh grade in Verona, Wisconsin, and blogs at http://pernillesripp.com. Follow her on Twitter @PernilleRipp.
