We have a little over 300 schools and are in the process of creating a blueprint plan. The goal is to have a plan that is differentiated by school, but will still lead to a general level of technological access. One of the big pushes in the plan is that ability to allow teachers and students to access our network using personal technology from handhelds to laptops. There is also a focus on PD for teachers.

Of course the general standard is the case, those who hear the message are those already implementing best practice.

I alerted my head of school to Leadership Day 2009, and gave him links to your page, the summaries of the 2008 and 2007 days, and gave him a link that would direct him to Twitter’s search for “leadershipday09″.

He wrote back this morning, thanking me for the connections and the the information. It’ll be interesting to see what shows up in my school’s planning this fall!

Thanks for the leadership on creating Leadership Day.

More than half of our school districts are smaller than one of the high schools in my district.

What does this mean? Small budgets and small schools usually lead to very small (often one-person) IT departments. Often times the person running those is a skilled IT professional, but does not always come with a school leadership background of preparation program.

While that, in and of itself, would not be critical, the superintendents are often not very involved in the operation. I am, of course, speaking in generalities, as there are always exceptions, but for the most part, being a superintendent means one’s focus is pointed at other issues, and IT is just supposed to keep things running (so to speak).

I am not placing a value judgment on this situation, but it seems to be a side-effect of small school districts and budgets.

Even in larger districts, the chief technology person can look very different in roles and responsibilities.

I am completely in agreement with your questions and answers – I just am afraid it describes an ideal situation which exists less than it should.

Your questions, Scott, are wonderful ones. What I wonder is whether we should be asking first if there is a Technology PLAN. It seems to me that a good Technology plan for a district would lay out the roles required for the technology infrastructure and technology integration to run successfully. Here in Philadelphia, I have yet to see a Technology Plan that includes many stakeholders and addresses not just infrastructure (the focus of our current plan) but the integration aspect as well. It took me a week just to track down ANY plan for our district.

For me, the best solution would be for there to be a District-wide plan as well as individual school plans that follow the main goals of the District. The Superintendent, as you stated, would have to act as the main ‘leader’ in implementing this plan – making sure that everyone does his or her job. That would allow for delegation of responsibility to appropriate parties while still maintaining a connection to Tech integration and ensuring that district goals are tracked and met.

I would be interested to hear from someone from a large district (we have over 200 schools) who has successfully implemented a plan or feels that they have successful leadership for technology integration.