Homewood City Schools hosts a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) environment for students because we believe that this personalizes learning and contributes to student mastery, efficiency, and productivity. While cell phones may be used for learning purposes, these have proven to be limited in scope in the instructional environment. The device brought to school is to be used in accordance with the district’s policy outlined in the Technology Resource Agreement and at the professional discretion of the classroom teacher. This means that all teachers welcome students to bring a device for instructional and organizational productivity.

Consistent with evolving trends of best practices in education, our teachers and students are increasingly using online educational tools such as Google Apps for Education (now G Suite for Education), Schoology, digital textbooks, Overdrive for checking out electronic books from the library, and many other instructional audio and video resources available to educators and their students. The growing use of online tools has driven the need for access to devices throughout the day. Our schools are outfitted with several and different kinds of devices that are shared among all teachers and can be accessed in certain quantities by teachers for student use when lessons lend themselves to this need.

However, many students find it much more convenient to use their own laptop or tablet consistently for continuity and personalization.