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The Los Fresnos CISD Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Initiative is going strong, thanks in large part to teachers who are enhancing their instructional styles by incorporating technology.<\/p>\n
Goodbye pen and paper. Hello mobile phones and mobile tablets. The Go Green initiative is here.<\/p>\n
At the Los Fresnos United Ninth Grade Campus, World Geography teachers Ashley Cox, Guillermo Gomez and Cynthia Wareham are among the many whose classroom instruction is big on technology.<\/p>\n
Between 50 and 90 percent of LFU students, depending on the class, are using their mobile devices as part of their regular curriculum in World Geography.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost students have mobile phones, but now many are more comfortable bringing iPads or tablets,\u201d Wareham said. \u201cSome kids don\u2019t want to break them because they belong to their parents, so they use their phones instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wareham, Cox and Gomez are using Edmodo in their daily instruction. Students download the Edmodo app on their devices and are able to connect with their teachers for all daily work and assignments. Edmodo has been compared to Blackboard, which is used at the collegiate level.<\/p>\n
Many teachers at LFU and Los Fresnos High School use Edmodo.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks like the layout in Facebook, and that\u2019s what the students love,\u201d Gomez said. \u201cIt also puts me in a learning community with social studies teachers from all over the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teachers like Gomez create folders for each class on Edmodo, where they can upload class assignments and other information. \u201cStudents have the documents they are working on, so they can view them anytime and anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike Facebook, students using Edmodo cannot request friends outside of their class. They can only communicate with people in their classroom. They must have a password to access the class.<\/p>\n
Wareham uses Edmodo daily through the Today in History app. \u201cI\u2019ll send out a post and everybody gets it immediately. Sometimes students may not finish work in class, they take a picture of it with their phone and finish it at home. I will have students responding asking me questions, even at night.\u201d
\nWareham is also a big fan of Google Drive, where documents and images can be stored and accessed from any computer or mobile device.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoogle Drive is something I use a lot,\u201d Wareham said. \u201cI hear the excuses that I left my homework at home, my USB broke, or the dog ate my homework. With Google Drive, there are no excuses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cox uses a different approach with her classes, using Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found a great way to interact with the students was to use what they had already downloaded on their phones,\u201d Cox said. \u201cMost already had Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead of posting on Edmodo, Cox posts class assignments on Twitter. From there, she can post links to videos, chats, and news stories. Students can view their assignments from anywhere on their mobile devices.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith just a picture or caption, you can catalog everything they worked on,\u201d Cox said. \u201cStudents can see their work and it\u2019s always cataloged. Two or three years from now, when they have to do a portfolio for a class, they can go back to what they did in the freshman year.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, students can capture images in class from their mobile devices because they did not have an atlas at home. \u201cIt\u2019s a great way for them to see their work on the Internet, and not just on a wall posted in a classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many administrators and teachers also use the QR Code reader app for different purposes. Wareham posted a QR code during a class assignment that linked to historical events. Students took pictures of the QR code with their mobile devices, and they were able to find answers to quiz questions there.
\nCox also uses Class Dojo for behavior management. The app connects students, parents and teachers so that feedback can be provided in any direction. It allows the teacher to provide feedback to the parents, both positive and negative. \u201cWe can send messages to parents instantly about their children\u2019s behavior in class, whether positive or negative.\u201d<\/p>\n
Getting students accustomed to using mobile devices instead of paper will also help the environment in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t think that the students would embrace this,\u201d Wareham said. \u201cWe thought this would be too immature for them. But most of them have embraced it. They think \u2018this is cool, this is great.\u2019 They can now see because I am walking around the class with an iPad. They are more active in class.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gomez knows that BYOD is here to stay. \u201cThe BYOD initiative has been a blessing,\u201d Students, especially at the high school level, have mobile phones and iPads. It\u2019s a reality. With the new technology, we have to adjust our teaching styles. The positives outweigh the negatives. Students have phones in their pockets and now we\u2019re using them for instruction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Los Fresnos CISD Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Initiative is going strong, thanks in large part to teachers who are enhancing their instructional styles by incorporating technology. Goodbye pen and paper. Hello mobile phones and mobile tablets. The Go Green initiative is here. At the Los Fresnos United Ninth Grade Campus, World Geography teachers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lfcisd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1984,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982\/revisions\/1984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}