30 Jun Thoughts from Edutech 2015

In June 2015 we exhibited at Edutech in Brisbane. It was an awesome opportunity to connect with educators from across Australasia, and it provided us with great insight into BYOD and how we can make a difference in this exciting area.

Edutech was new to us – in some of the research we did at PCR we heard about Edutech online.  Not having been in the Education system before, but being a parent who started this company for the sake of his children, we decided that we would go along and see what Edutech was all about and how our products fitted into BYOD in Australia.

Wow. What a huge learning curve, we discovered that BYOD for each school and each state is very unique. How they did it, how they implement it and how they rolled it out into their schools.

We had the opportunity to speak with educators and influencers from across Australasia. One of the teachers we spoke to was Auckland teacher Andrew Nyhoff. He expressed both excitment but also frustration in how BYOD can work in the classroom.

Here are some of his thoughts:

“I teach in the sciences, so the sciences are often doing experiments. The ability just to record an image, or a three second byte in the middle of an experiment is very powerful. So that aspect is good.

“The struggle is you have a brilliant idea or a plan of where you want to take people and it only works on three quarters of the machines. So the struggle with BYOD really is to make sure that all the platforms are consistent in some way shape or form.”

This reinforced to us that what we are doing is on the right track. We are passionate about schools using only one operating system, specifically Windows. And  one of the biggest reasons for this is choice.

An example is if you choose IOS or Apple as an operating system, then you limit the devices that children can bring to school. If you choose Windows as an operating system, there are a number of different manufacturers. And even though at PCR, we believe we are the best bang-for-buck there is, there is still choice out there for the consumers and I think that makes a big difference. It makes the parents not feel like they are being muscled into something they don’t necessarily want or like.

Our three take-aways from Edutech 2015:

– Schools are enthusiastic about the opportunities BYOD offers!
– There is still more education that needs to happen around BYOD – both for the educators and parents
– BYOD is the future and it is exciting.

We came away from Edutech 2015 both excited about the potential, and also understanding that this is quite a long journey of education and understanding how to take this technology and use it appropriately and effectively in schools ahead of us all.

We are passionate about providing an option for parents and schools that is the best value available. Please contact us today if you would like to hear more about how we can work together, or click here to look at the tablets we have for sale.