The annual holiday letter to parents

The ads are out. One like this appeared in the Shopko flyer last week:

My worry when I see ads for products like these is that parents will purchase such devices for their kids, the kids will bring them to school only to discover that they will not meet their academic needs, parents will get upset with the technology department, and kids won't be happy. "You want kids to bring their own devices, but you didn't say which ones!"

So as a precaution and as an assist to gift purchasers, we again sent out the letter below to all households in our student information systems. Use it to create your own if you are a BYOD district....

Dear Parents and Guardians ,

As the holiday season nears, gift buying will move into high gear for many of us. I am sure that some sort of technology device is on many of your children's wish lists. New products like the iPad Mini, the Microsoft Surface, various Android tablets like the Nexus and the Galaxy, and color e-book readers along with netbooks and latops are adding a lot choices (and confusion) to the low-cost computing market. Powerful smartphones, both iPhones and Androids, are popular with many children and young adults.

We thought it might be helpful if we outlined some specifications of any device you might buy Mankato Area Public School students if you'd like them to use it to complete school work (and not just play Where’s My Water?, watch YouTube, or send text messages.)

While we won't recommend specific models or even kinds of devices, I would encourage you to buy a piece of equipment that meets these requirements if it is to be used for most school work. Your child's device should have:

• an 802.11x wireless networking capability (the district provides filtered wireless access in all buildings to students)

• a virus protection program (if running a Windows or Macintosh computer operating system)

• a color screen

• an on screen or external keyboard or other means of entering text

• an audio out port and earbuds or headphones

• a minimum 4 hours of use from one battery charge

• a full functioning, recent web browser (Firefox, Explorer, Chrome, Safari) that will allow it to access GoogleApps for Education tools and documents, the Infinite Campus student portal, Moodle 2.0, the state of Minnesota's ELM content databases, and the Destiny library catalog along with other e-resources the district provides

You may wish to consider getting a device that has

• a camera that takes both still photos and video (front and rear cameras are most versatile)

• a microphone

• ability to run Flash (this is to view some online videos and animations until all sites convert to HTML5)

• machine-based productivity software (MicrosoftOffice, Open Office, iWork) for use when an Internet connection is not available

• the capacity to run graphing calculator software

Many smartphones, netbooks, tablets, or a full-sized laptops (new or used) can do the job.

You might wish to bring the above list into the store to ask the salespeople if the devices you are considering meet the requirements.

When writing a paper, solving a math problem, researching a topic or collaborating with fellow students, technology can help your child do his or her school work and develop good technology skills along the way - and maybe even text when the studies are done.

Please e-mail one of us if you have any questions.

Happy holidays,

Your school tech department

Comments

[Tim Stahmer]

Very good, very concise list, although I would take issue with the Flash suggestion. It's not just about Apple devices. Adobe has stopped support and development for Flash on Android devices as well and, in my experience, using that technology is not at all consistent on them, depending on the version of the OS and other factors.

I would also push the camera and microphone up into the must have section. There are so many creative things that can be done with the ability to record sights and sounds, I think any device without that ability is severely limited as a classroom tool.

Thanks for jogging my thinking. I realized that we have no such advice to parents in all the materials about BYOD on our district's website and it's something we definitely need.

[Kenn Gorman]

I would expect that if this list gets out, there will be some Walmart and Best Buys employees very nervous.

I might be asking you for permission in the near future to use this, as the word on the street here is that we will officially have a BYOD policy for next year.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Tim,

We had long discussions about both Flash and cameras both years we put this list together. With Flash, we recognize that it is going away - but it's not gone yet for many of our educational games and interactive websites. There are work arounds for both Android and iOS devices so they can play Flash stuff.

The question we had was about requiring a REAR facing camera to do the things you want. For Android devices this tends to drive the price up so left it optional. Next year we will revisit this decisions for sure.

Again, I think it should be what school resources the kids need to access and what projects they will be required to complete that drive the technical specs. Your mileage may differ!

Thanks for the input,

Doug

Hi Kenn,

Or it may make Walmart and BestBuy employees very happy since they don't need to guess what's needed - and in some cases can upsell!

Use it when and as you can as a model.

Doug

[Miguel Guhlin]

Is this chart too hard to follow?
http://www.mguhlin.org/2012/11/byot-mobile-device-chart.html

Thanks,
miguel