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When it comes to learning beyond school, students have choices. In many cases, students are beginning to see school as less and less relevant to their learning. Many students are using or learning to use the technology tools to learn without us. If this trend continues, combined with classroom activities that for too many students are unengaging, unmotivating, and unchallenging, some predict that as students develop personal learning environments less connected to what schools currently offer them, schooling as we know it will become less and less relevant.
Leadership means more to me than a textbook answer, primarily because of my military experience. Working with people so they can replace you is just part of the job. In the field of technology, there are self proclaimed leaders, self made leaders, and leaders leading the way just because they chose to move forward even though the world was against them. However you define it, just search #leadershipday2009 and see the blogs, tweets, images, and events occurring all around you in support of Dr. Mcleod's Leadership Day 2009, blog call to action.
It's Leadership Day 09, details here. My post is simple. Ignorance of student used technology is legally unacceptable.
Leadership Day 09 comes at an interesting time for me. I just returned from a fabulous five day workshop with the California Geographic Alliance. The subject? Leadership and Reform. Now, this organization is different from a school site, but I spent a lot of time thinking and writing about how groups of like-minded people function.
Dear K-12 School Leader,
The first that I would that you to do is consider online learning because of the learning opportunities it provides, not because of the perceived problems that it solves. Adopting K-12 online learning to solve problems will invariably create other problems that will be just as difficult to solve. So it is six of one, half dozen of the other. Be more deliberate than that in your thinking about your students and their education.
In my work with special education students over the last six years, I have consistently heard from special education teachers and administrators the refrain of "creating a least restrictive environment for students." The idea being that in a least restrictive environment students have the most opportunities to experience new things, explore their creativity, and grow personally and academically. I completely agree with these ideas.
Effective technology leadership promotes growth. Promoting growth involves providing access. Providing access allows learning anywhere, anytime and anyplace.
Educational leaders often wonder how to prepare students for the 21st century. The reality is that the 21st century is literally today. Here are some ideas to help you ‘predict the future’:
I hope your summer is going well and that you had some down time to refresh for the upcoming school year. As you plan for the year I want you to consider more changes than new room assignments or a new schedule. I was reading this blog post and it inspired me to write this letter to you. For years I have approached your office with various ideas on how to infuse technology into the school. While you have been receptive, you have not been supportive. It doesn't matter if you have tech-savvy people that are willing to help in professionaldevelopment if you don't make technology a priority in the building.
And so begins my first encounter with the blog. I’ve gone back and forth – to blog or not to blog – struggling mostly with time it might take from other things and how my thoughts might be interpreted (or misinterpreted) by our teachers and/or parents. I’m taken, however, with the idea of Leadership Day – as described by Scott McLeod at dangerouslyirrelevant.org, and I believe in the sharing of ideas I’ve come to see through Twitter and other digital venues. If this isn’t a good time to start sharing my ideas, my thoughts, and my questions – then I don’t know when such a time will come.
I will start by saying that I am very fortunate to have an administration who embraces innovation in instructional technology. As proof of her vision as a leader, she also sees technological and instructional leadership to be tightly woven together. This is an essential key to creating a school culture that will embrace the greater collaborative opportunities that are afforded with the tools available today, not just the tools themselves.
If you are a school administrator what is your vision for the future? Have you articulated your vision for education in the age of technology to your staff? Are you leading the change or have you developed a 'let's wait and see where this is going' policy?
Earlier this week, I blogged about being a principal who twitters. Those of you who read the post learned that I am certifiably a ‘tech geek’. It is important to note that I am also NOT very ‘tech savvy’. For example, I struggle to define critical technology terms (gigabyte, modem, html, css) and certainly do not know how to rebuild a hard drive. I have been smart enough to call on technology experts when needed:
How to be a Visionary Educational Leader in the 21st Century!
With all of these external pressures there is little time for school leadership to encourage teachers to take risks in their classroom and be creative in terms of technology. However, I believe there are 4 simple things that school leadership can do to help teachers as they transition their classrooms to Web 2.0 learning.
Schools today need heroes. Not superheroes who save the day, but leaders who are not afraid to make changes to improve student learning rather than perform well on "the test."
"Those who advocate incremental change are not the heroes of history." unknown tweet
I saw this a few weeks ago on twitter and it summarizes how I feel about where schools need to go. We need to be bold and not afraid to try new things.
I just moved to a new town and one of my new neighbors just happens to be a school administrator. I can guarantee you that he will not read this post as he sees no need for technology in his building or apparently in his life. In this post we will refer to my neighbor as Craig. Craig seems to me, very much, a bricks and mortar kind of guy.
Craig and I have talked about what I do for the Center at Rutgers. He sees me sitting on the front porch working on my laptop while my kids play in the front yard. He knows I usually have by Blackberry on me when I take the dog for walks. Craig on the other hand is very off-the-grid. I’m not even certain he owns a cell phone.
Over at Dangerously Irrelevant, Scott McLeod posted a request for Leadership Day 2009 blog posts. Here’s the 2.5 cents I have to offer school leaders and administrators on technology use.
Please, Administrators of Canada (and probably the US and Australia, and South Korea, and New Zealand, and Morocco, and…), please stop jumping headfirst into change initiatives and expect your teachers to jump on with you as if they had been there from the start.
My thoughts on this Leadership Day ...
For me, it is the power of conversations about learning and teaching and the potential of technology that will move people toward new ways of thinking.
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Scott McLeod of Dangerously Irrelevant fame invited edubloggers (educational bloggers) worldwide to post (write in our blogs) about digital technologies. Here are bookmared posts I collected from the day.
Updated on 2009-07-13
Created on 2009-07-12
Category: Schools & Education
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