Traci Bonde has 17+ years as an educational technology administration.  Her passionis vision/systems to access information for students in poverty.  She loves motorcycles, family, politics, and hiking.  Connect with her on Twitter at @tr_bo.

Creating a school culture and a district perspective on BYOD requires a slow thoughtful approach with all stakeholders.  A year ago when I began my position as the 1st CTO of Dublin Unified, one of the first tasks as the first CTO of the school district was to review social media and acceptable use policy’s with the Board.  This may not seem like a critical first step as the first CTO for a school district, and in hindsight it was the right one. As I made revisions toall technology board policies and administrative regulations, I began thinking about where we needed to go on our journey with a 21st-century technology integration.

Over a number of years, the district had rolled out a lot of technology in classrooms for teachers and was at the beginning of rolling out technology for students. 3400 chrome books had been deployed the year before. The need for procedures and policies was evident as the next natural step.  I knew I wanted to change the acceptable use policy to an opt in model. That eased paperwork and tension at the beginning of every year by auto opting in all students that would use technology on the first day of school.  I also have to admit I am a fan of BYOD models. I believe BYOD is far more financially sustainable, yet they are not as popular as one to one in schools currently.

This fall, I proposed a BYOD policy to the Superintendent and he was willing to entertain the idea. I began doing homework and discovered there were no BYOD board policies I could find in the State of California at any school district. When I began a search nationally, I came across very few formal board adopted BYOD policies in any school district.  I pulled the best of what I could find and began drafting the BYOD policy that went to our Board this winter. The initial request from the Board members was to involve student voice to ensure they had an opportunity to say what they wanted to see happen in the language. Work was also done at the Technology Advisory Committee level as well as with targeted classrooms in fifth and eighth grade.

Once the acceptable use opt in policy and the new BYOD policy were board adopted, I began the work of compiling class rules that would be edited by the same student groups that contributed to the board policy.

  
  
  
All of the work is now done with a board policy, a BYOD agreement, a BYOD FAQ, and BYOD classroom rules procedures.  All of the documents have been turned over to school principals and they have been tasked with taking to their leadership teams, their parents, their teachers, and their student body:

All documents can be found here: dublin.k12.ca.us/Page/9492

The value of having a BYOD policy and all items mentioned above assures parents, teachers, administrators, Board members, and the Superintendent that there is a legal framework to protect all parties.  Technology policies, agreements, & procedures are not sexy as other elements of tech integration. They are critical for school districts to be legally compliant and protected. I believe it also shows a level of commitment that speaks to the integration beyond the hardware.