6 Solutions to BYOD Challenges
Dennis Pierce · T.H.E. Journal Technological Horizons in Education · 2015
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Letting students bring their own devices to class can present IT and classroom-management difficulties. Here's how districts around the country are overcoming them. IN THE Derry Township School District in Hershey, PA, students as young as the fourth grade are allowed to bring their own devices to class to support their learning, at the discretion of their teacher. David Sweigert, director of infrastructure technology for the district, has a warning for those who want to adopt a similar policy in their schools: It can derail a good lesson if something goes wrong. If I'm an AP I teacher, I don't have a day to waste. Teachers need time to experiment so they can figure out how to deliver lessons, manage presentations and foster collaboration when students are using a wide range of --devices in Sweigert said. He added, will never truly work unless you have teacher adoption, and that won't happen unless educators feel comfortable teaching in a mixed-device environment. challenges involved in letting students bring their own devices for use in class aren't just instructional in nature. They also include IT challenges such as providing secure network access while making sure students' online activities are visible to IT administrators. Ed tech leaders in districts around the country have found solutions to these challenges. Here are some of the lessons they've learned from supporting BYOD environments. Controlling and Monitoring Network Access Schools adopting BYOD policies need an easy way for students to log on to the network with their personal devices and receive appropriate access without compromising security. Fortunately, many wireless networking companies have developed automated tools to help with this process. Derry Township uses a product called ZoneDirector from Ruckus Wireless for its network authentication. When students bring in a device from home, they can choose to connect to one of two wireless networks, Sweigert said: the main district network (DTSD) or a separate guest network. The guest network is an open network, but we're throttling the speed and it's heavily filtered, he said. We tell students, 'If you want to get on a faster network, then use the DTSD network.' If students try to connect to DTSD, they are asked for their username and password. ZoneDirector checks this information against the Active Directory profiles stored in the district's authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) server and then delivers a certificate to the student's device. This certificate is good for 60 months, so the network will associate a particular device with a student for up to five years. students are authenticated on the network, their Internet access is filtered according to the rules established for their group profile. Connecticut's Stonington Public Schools also lets students bring in their own devices, beginning in middle school. Like Derry Township, Stonington offers both a guest network and a district network, and it uses the NetSight wireless management system from Extreme Networks to authenticate users and give them network privileges based on their Active Directory profile. According to Director of Technology Jason Jones, with NetSight, Once students enter their credentials, there are a few security checks that are run on their machine. Then, students must agree to our policy terms --and they are given Internet access. Both ZoneDirector and NetSight also provide insight into a district's wireless network use, such as which users are connected and what devices they are using. Sweigert said, It's nice to be able to see what kind of devices students are bringing to class, so teachers and administrators can plan accordingly. Using Device-agnostic Software BYOD environments also pose challenges for classroom teachers, especially when students are sharing resources or working together on projects. …