The possibilities of BYOD

At our Junior High School the students are not allowed to have their phones at school or in the classrooms. The rule of thumb is that as long as we don't see it or hear it everything is fine.  However, through the classes I have taken in CMU's Educational Technology program I have learned how beneficial phones and other devices can be.  One program I have grown to love is PollEverywhere.  What I love about this program is that I can do a quick poll to check for understanding without having to call my students out.  When I ask questions for understanding I always get the same people raising their hands.  I really don't know if everyone "gets it".  So, I started to allow my students to bring their phones to class at the end of the year last year so we could do some "polls".  I first had to ask how many of my students had phones and surprisingly about 3/4 or more of my class of 6th grade students did.  At the beginning of the hour I asked questions regarding the material we had discussed the day before.  If I saw that there were a large amount of students with the wrong answer I knew there was a problem that needed some revisiting.  I also asked my students if they felt that they should be allowed to have their phones in school.  Needless to say the response was an overwhelming "YES!".  Students can use this program, as well as hundreds of others, using their phone and other devices.  I think it was a great addition to my classroom.  I also incorporated this program into the iPad training PD session that I ran before school started.  My students even began creating their own PollEverywhere questions to be printed in the school newspaper for other students to respond via text.  It was great to see them get so into something I had introduced (even if I went against the rules...)
Here are some screenshots of our polls.