A Parent’s Guide to BYOD: 10 Questions Every Parent Should Ask Their BYOD School

Schools that implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach to technology have taken great care to develop strong policies and guidelines for students using their own devices.  Most schools inform the parents, asking them to sign permission forms and BYOD policy guidelines, and spend much time justifying “why” they have a BYOD policy.  Yet, schools tend to leave out an important piece:  how parents can best support the schools BYOD learning to policies at home.  Many parents are often a bit confused as to what their role is in a BYOD school.  

10 questions parents should be asking the school district

1. What are the optimal devices that work best for my child to fully participate in the BYOD activities at school?
2. What type of mobile plan do your recommend that I/we purchase for my child’s device?
3. Do you recommend that my child pay for their own device or is it better that I pay for all or part of it?
4. Does our family need to have Wifi or Broadband Internet?  If we don’t have Broadband Internet, is there another way we can participate?
5. Are there any software or hardware companies where the school has a “discount” for families?
6. What if we cannot afford a device for our child?   Does the school provide devices to loan to families?  Does the school have a scholarship account for children in need? 
7. What are the rules and structures around device use at school?   Should I be implementing these same rules at home? 
8. Do you have any resources that could help support digital citizenship at home?
9. Are there classroom or school activities that I can also participate in through my mobile device?
10. Do you have any suggestions how I can better communicate with my child through our mobile devices? 

What other questions should parents be asking schools with a BYOD policy?  Please share in the comments below

KiKutext for Teachers to Communicate with Students and Parents

A new and free resource called KiKutext is a mass text messaging service for teachers to communicate better with students and their parents. A few excellent features of this resource include the phone number given to the teacher so that they do not have to give out their own number, in addition to texting the entire class there is the ability to individually text students and/or their parents, the ability to add multiple classes and have everything archived online, and the ability to text via the Internet so that the teacher's phone is not charged for too many text messages! Furthermore, the service does not use shortcodes so it works with any phone service! Finally it has a wonderful feature called "status reports" where parents can get quick text message updates about their child (the teacher can choose from a pre-selected list or create their own). All correspondence is archived in the teacher's private account.