On Jan. 25, CHS launched a pilot Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program that enables students to bring their iPads to school for academic purposes. The main purpose of this program is to help students become more involved with their school work and gain more accessibility to technology since many classrooms currently use iPads. The BYOD program will grant students the ability to access the school’s wifi on their own iPads so they will be able to access technology in and out of class.

BYOD was launched as a pilot program four years ago when the district wanted students to access technology. Students were allowed to bring any device into their classrooms after it was uncovered that the school would not be able to incorporate computers due to school budgeting. Since students were already familiar with using iOS devices, the school decided to implement iPads into classrooms and have been using iPads in their classrooms for three years now.

Kara Evans is the Teacher on Special Assignment of Educational Technology and was previously an English teacher at CHS for 10 years. Since then, Evans has focused on putting together and expanding the BYOD program.

“This is what we call a soft launch; we are not expecting a huge percentage of students this spring to go out and buy an iPad and have it tomorrow. We are interested in reaching out to students who already have iPads. If the students are willing to try out this program, then we will try it. We don’t really have an expectation of numbers for this spring, but our intent is to have all students use technology before they graduate,” Evans said.

Currently, the district has 4,000 iPads, 1,100 of which are at CHS. With students bringing their own iPads to school, they can start their work at school and take their work home with them. The school will insert 18 academic apps onto the the students’ iPads that are used in school classrooms, such as Notability, Pages, and many more.

“I think that being able to bring our own iPads is great, because it can be difficult to keep up with school work when you use the classroom iPads. BYOD means that we can now bring our own devices to school when and where we like to and are now able to work on our academic work in our own time,” sophomore Metzli Montero said.

Hopefully, students will begin to become more involved with BYOD, develop more skills and experience with technology, and use this opportunity to explore and utilize automation. Technology has reached every corner of the world, and in this technological age and time, it will be beneficial for students to improve and use technology as an academic stepping stone.