BYOD

Bring Your Own Device

Our 2024 Drop in session times have now finished for 2024.  Please contact your child's class teacher if you need a new device setup.

Current BYOD Students and Parents

NEW BYOD Parents and Students Start Here

1

Parent Information

2023 BYOD Information Evening Sunnyhills School

The 2023 BYOD evening slide deck can be viewed above.

In term 4 each year we hold a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) parent information evening.  All year 2 parents and caregivers who are moving to Year 3 the following year are invited to come to this evening.  Any other interested families including those new to Sunnyhills in year 3-6 are also welcome to attend. 

During this event, we go over the BYOD programme and what we use devices for.  We also explain our rationale behind BYOD and give recommendations for devices.  

The 2023 BYOD evening was held on Thursday 23 November.

2

Purchasing a Device

From 2023 onwards

All students who are new to bringing a device to school will only be allowed to bring a Chromebook

Please note - We do not accept tablets or Chromebooks with detachable keyboards as a BYOD.  

Students who were in year 3, 4, and 5 in 2022 and brought a device to school will be allowed to continue to bring their Chromebook, Mac or Windows device.  We ask that should you replace those devices you do so with a Chromebook

Bringing a device to school is optional.  Students who do not bring a device will have access to school-owned Chromebooks for their learning during school time.

We provide a list of recommended Chromebooks through our partner retailers, you are welcome to choose other makes and models if you wish.

Please see the notes below that will give you an idea of what to look for when purchasing a device.

What to look for

Why Chromebooks?

Where can I purchase a device?

There are a number of retailers around New Zealand that sell Chromebooks.  A selection of flyers have been added for you.

It is highly recommended to purchase insurance with your device to cover any breakages.

Please note there are Chromebooks with detachable keyboards on the Noel Leeming site.  

We do not allow detachable keyboards for BYOD at Sunnyhills.

3

Device Setup

See 4. for details of BYOD Drop in session times.

Parents are asked to attend a BYOD Drop-in session with their children to set up their devices.  The dates for these sessions are below.

From 2023 all BYOD Chromebooks will be managed using the Chrome Upgrade Licence.  

You can find out more about the Chrome Upgrade and what it means for you and your child's device here on our Chrome Upgrade page.

4

Booking a Drop in Session

Our 2024 Drop in Session have finished please contact your child's teacher to arrange a drop in time with them and get your child's device setup correctly.

All year 3-6 learners who have not previously bought a device to school and wish to bring one will need to attend a drop-in session BEFORE the device is bought to school.   

During these sessions learners and their families will:

It is likely to take about 20-30 minutes to get through the process. 

It is preferable to have the device fully charged but not set up.  The device will be returned to factory settings before the upgrade is installed.  Anything saved on the device will be deleted.

Important Documents

Why BYOD?

Future Focussed Learning

Our children are entering a world that is looking for abilities far different from the traditional.  We want them to be able to collect, synthesise and analyse information and then work collaboratively with others to apply that knowledge. They need to learn how to learn and to respond to the constantly changing technologies and social and global changes in the world.

Bring Your Own Device allows students to have one-to-one time on a device that is set up to their specifications for their learning. This has many benefits, including:

• enabling students to take increasing responsibility for their own learning

• empowering students to learn at a pace and place as well as a way which suits them

• teaches students how to discern what tool will best help with their learning

• encouraging and enabling teachers to more easily implement personalised learning

• prepares students for a future where they are likely to be working in an environment with increasing amounts of technology and IT/collaborative/cloud based tools.

Digital Citizenship

As part of our learning at Sunnyhills school we help students to develop their digital citizenship.  Our learning resources for this are on our SHINE Online site.  Our SHINE Online site also has a parent resources page where you can find a wealth of resources to help you continue to develop citizenship at home.

Sunnyhills School is a Netsafe school. We regularly review and improve our policies, procedures and curriculum related to digital citizenship to ensure we're providing the best possible learning environment and experiences for learners both online and offline.

Google Workspace for Education and Hapara

How does Google Workspace for Education (previously, Google Suite, GAFE) work?

The Google Workspace for Education (GSuite) offers apps for email, calendar, blogs, documents, presentations and website creation as well as Google Drive, which is a way of organising all of the work done on these apps. The use of these apps is free and can be used in ‘the cloud’ - a collaborative environment where others can access and work on documents together in real-time. Google Workspace allows students to access their work from school, home, the local library - anywhere with an internet connection.  Students at Sunnyhills have restricted access to some applications provided by Google Workspace accounts for example only those in year 5 and 6 have use of email.  All students are unable to make creations on their accounts using applications that are restricted to those over the age of 13.  This includes YouTube and Blogger. 

What is Hapara Teacher Dashboard?

Hapara Teacher Dashboard is an interface which brings together the tools of Google Workspace in an overview style so that teachers can access, set tasks, mark and comment on work completed in Google Workspace. It gives teachers the ability to oversee an entire class of work, like they would a class set of exercise books. It also allows teachers and senior school staff the ability to oversee all the activity of any student account. This gives the ability to do a range of things, including, but not limited to: changing passwords if students forget them or suspending an account if the Student Responsibility Agreement is breached. You can read more about Teacher Dashboard here: https://hapara.com/products/g-suite/