Students who are asked to bring their own devices to class may be a slight step behind their peers when it comes to classroom productivity. A recent EdTechMagazine article reports that schools may want to move toward providing their own devices.

The article highlighted the Coachella Valley Unified School District who was applauded for being able to provide all 19,000 of their students with tablets.

“Our mobile device program was financed by a general application bond, which our voters approved with 67 percent of the vote back in 2012,” district Superintendent Darryl Adams said, according to the report.

The school even earned notice from President Obama. So, why is it that providing students with technology rather than having them follow the “Bring Your Own Device” method a more efficient bet? Shouldn’t having technology in the classroom be enough to garner more efficiency?

Students are individuals and like them, their devices will differ from one another. Educators would need time to adapt to every different device in the classroom, which would lower instruction time and increase confusion. If a teacher has to stop in the middle of a lesson to show a student using an Apple device in a room with PC users the rest of the class will be kept waiting.

That’s where technological uniform comes in. By providing the same device for all students, it levels the playing field and limits the amount of time taken away from instruction and preparation for educators.

“A lot of teachers may try a few things, like getting kids to use their cameras to do some interesting work,” said Patricia Wallace, former head of online programs and IT for the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth and author of “The Psychology of the Internet,” according to the report, “but it’s a struggle for the teachers because they know not all kids have an appropriate device.”

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Article by Navindra Persaud, Education World Contributor