Last week (11th-15th Jan), I had the opportunity to engage in the ‘open magic box’ that is Bring Your Own Device For Learning or #BYOD4L on social media. I had taken part in 2015, but this year I also volunteered as a community mentor and helped facilitate a tweetchat.
BYOD4L is a fantastic community that spans the global education sector and focuses on the use of mobile/smart devices in learning and teaching. It runs over a week and participants have the opportunity to engage through a variety of online communities; Google+, Facebook and Twitter and at a time and place appropriate to them (often people are in different timezones).
Each of the 5 days has a theme from the ‘5 Cs’; Connecting, Communicating, Curating Collaborating and Creating and participants are encouraged to engage with various learning and teaching scenarios that relate to the theme and the potential use of mobile technologies. I posted thoughts on these themes in 2015 and submitted them as part of a portfolio to gain accreditation through digital badges that signify the skills that I have developed. For the 2016 iteration of the course, I’m now collating evidence to support an application for the mentoring badge.
Part of the mentoring process involved responding to, as well as instigating conversations within online spaces, which for me are on Google+ and Twitter. I also co-facilitated Tuesday’s #BYOD4Lchat on Communicating which ran from 8-9pm. It was great to connect with so many other educators interested in the use of technology to support learning and a storify of the conversation was made available for reference and for those that couldn’t join us at that time.
It was a great experience to connect with colleagues across the sector and I’d recommend others to get involved in the next run. Contact the team to discuss opportunities for using mobile devices in learning and teaching.