The Effect of the BYOD Model in Comparison with the Traditional use of ICT In Primary Schools

It is often today claimed in the media and literature that we are in a time of tremendous technological growth, with everything in society being modernised and the dominance of digital technologies on the horizon. In contrast, digital technologies can result in changes in society and greatly affect interpersonal relationships and communication between people. Digital technologies affect all generations, and especially children in primary school. It seems that the use of these devices in education could be beneficial for both parties, schools and pupils. Thanks to their flexibility there is the possibility of using different didactic approaches that directly respond to the specific learning styles and diverse needs of pupils, from the slowest to the most gifted. The aim of this paper is to describe the effect of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) model in comparison to the traditional concept of digital technology in the higher primary school classroom. The aim of the research was to compare the effect of the BYOD model on teaching compared to the traditional use of digital technology using a questionnaire and a didactic test. The research was conducted in Czech Republic and utilized pupils smartphones and Ipads. For this finding, thematically identical teaching units were designed and implemented for two groups of pupils. The two experimental groups differed from each other only in the way they used digital technologies. This experiment was conducted in the context of teaching two tribal classes of children 11-12 years old. A total of 42 children participated in the research, of which 18 formed the research group and 24 formed the control group. The design of the thematic units was oriented to one of the modules of the computer science subject. Specifically, the lessons focused on hardware and software. The Nearpod web application was chosen for the BYOD model intervention in teaching, mainly because of its availability, accessibility and ease of orientation in the application. The research results suggest that the BYOD model may not always be effective; however, factors that caused or otherwise influenced this are discussed.