Many of our school leaders (principals, superintendents, central office administrators) need help when it comes to digital technologies. A lot of help, to be honest. As I’ve noted again and again on this blog, most school administrators don’t know
what it means to prepare students for the digital, global world in which we now live;
how to recognize, evaluate, and facilitate effective technology usage by students and teachers;
what appropriate technology support structures (e.g., budget, staffing, infrastructure, training) look like or how to implement them;
how to utilize modern technologies to facilitate communication with internal and external stakeholders;
the ways in which learning technologies can improve student learning outcomes;
how to utilize technology systems to make their organizations more efficient and effective;
and so on…
Administrators’ lack of knowledge is not entirely their fault. Many of them didn’t grow up with computers. Other than basic management or data analysis technologies, many are not using digital tools or online systems on a regular basis. Few have received training from their employers or their university preparation programs on how to use, think about, or be a leader regarding digital technologies.
So let’s help them out.
How to participate
On Wednesday, August 15, 2012, blog about whatever you like related to effective school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs, wants, resources, ideas, etc. Write a letter to the administrators in your area. Post a top ten list. Make a podcast or a video or a voice-narrated presentation. Highlight a local success or challenge. Recommend some readings. Create an app, game, or simulation. Draw a cartoon. Do an interview of a successful technology leader. Respond to some of the questions below or make up your own. If you participated in years past, post a follow-up reflection. Whatever strikes you.
TO ENSURE THAT WE CAN FIND YOUR POST, please complete the online submission form AFTER you post, including a short teaser that will drive traffic to your post. Everyone then will be able to see your post in the complete list of submissions. If you want to link back to this post or leave a link to yours in the comment area, that’s okay too!
Some prompts to spark your thinking
What do effective P-12 technology leaders do? What actions and behaviors can you point to that make them effective leaders in the area of technology?
Do administrators have to be technology-savvy themselves in order to be effective technology leaders in their organizations?
What are some tangible, concrete, realistic steps that administrators can take to move their school organizations forward?
What are some tangible, concrete, realistic steps that can be taken to move administrators themselves forward? Given the unrelenting pressures that they face and their ever-increasing time demands, what are some things that administrators can do to become more knowledgeable and skilled in the area of technology leadership?
What strengths and deficiencies are present in the NETS-A?
What is a technology tool that would be extremely useful for a busy administrator (i.e., one he or she probably isn’t using now)?
What should busy administrators be reading (or watching) that would help them be better technology leaders? What are some other resources that would help them be better technology leaders?
How can administrators best structure necessary conversations with internal or external stakeholders regarding technology?
How should administrators balance enablement with safety, risk with reward, fear with empowerment?
When it comes to P-12 technology leadership, where do we need new knowledge, understanding, training, or research?
What are (or might be) some successful models of technology leadership training for school administrators?
How might preservice preparation programs for administrators better incorporate elements of technology leadership?
When you think of (in)effective P-12 technology leadership, what comes to mind?
Here are the 353 ABSOLUTELY EXCELLENT posts from the past five years (353!)
Since the past four have been so successful [last year we had 114 posts!], I am putting out a call for people to participate in Leadership Day 2011. To paraphrase what I said four years ago:
Many of our school leaders (principals, superintendents, central office administrators) need help when it comes to digital technologies. A lot of help, to be honest. As I’ve noted again and again on this blog, most school administrators don’t know
what it means to prepare students for the digital, global world in which we now live;
how to recognize, evaluate, and facilitate effective technology usage by students and teachers;
what appropriate technology support structures (e.g., budget, staffing, infrastructure, training) look like or how to implement them;
how to utilize modern technologies to facilitate communication with internal and external stakeholders;
the ways in which learning technologies can improve student learning outcomes;
how to utilize technology systems to make their organizations more efficient and effective;
and so on…
Administrators’ lack of knowledge is not entirely their fault. Many of them didn’t grow up with computers. Other than basic management or data analysis technologies, many are not using digital tools or online systems on a regular basis. Few have received training from their employers or their university preparation programs on how to use, think about, or be a leader regarding digital technologies.
So let’s help them out.
How to participate
On Friday, August 5, 2011, blog about whatever you like related to effective school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs, wants, resources, ideas, etc. Write a letter to the administrators in your area. Post a top ten list. Make a podcast or a video. Highlight a local success or challenge. Recommend some readings. Do an interview of a successful technology leader. Respond to some of the questions below or make up your own. If you participated in years past, post a follow-up reflection. Whatever strikes you.
The official hashtag is #leadershipday11
TO ENSURE THAT I FIND YOUR POST, please add your info to the online spreadsheet AFTER you post. This will allow me to mention and directly link to your post when I do my summary post(s) a few days later. Everyone also will be able to see the complete list of submissions. If you want to link back to this post or leave a link to yours in the comment area, that’s okay too!
Some prompts to spark your thinking
What do effective K-12 technology leaders do? What actions and behaviors can you point to that make them effective leaders in the area of technology?
Do administrators have to be technology-savvy themselves in order to be effective technology leaders in their organizations?
What are some tangible, concrete, realistic steps that administrators can take to move their school organizations forward?
What are some tangible, concrete, realistic steps that can be taken to move administrators themselves forward? Given the unrelenting pressures that they face and their ever-increasing time demands, what are some things that administrators can do to become more knowledgeable and skilled in the area of technology leadership?
What strengths and deficiencies are present in the NETS-A?
What is a technology tool that would be extremely useful for a busy administrator (i.e., one he or she probably isn’t using now)?
What should busy administrators be reading (or watching) that would help them be better technology leaders? What are some other resources that would help them be better technology leaders?
How can administrators best structure necessary conversations with internal or external stakeholders regarding technology?
How should administrators balance enablement with safety, risk with reward, fear with empowerment?
When it comes to K-12 technology leadership, where do we need new knowledge, understanding, training, or research?
What are (or might be) some successful models of technology leadership training for school administrators?
How might preservice preparation programs for administrators better incorporate elements of technology leadership?
When you think of (in)effective K-12 technology leadership, what comes to mind?
Here are the ABSOLUTELY EXCELLENT posts from the past four years
There’s a lot of stuff that comes through my Twitter stream. In addition to independent tweets, there also are my posts from here and Mind Dump, my Delicious bookmarks, things that I share from Google Reader, posts from the other CASTLE blogs, and so on. So I wasn’t surprised to get a message recently that said something along the lines of “I’m overwhelmed by your tweets. Do you have a ‘best of the best’ channel?”
Today I’m launching McLeod Reads (@mcleodreads), which is intentionally designed to highlight not only my own best writing but also the best of what I’m reading from others. I’m a huge fan of Flipboard and Instapaper. I also sometimes use systems like Scoop.it, paper.li, Zite, Readability, TweetedTimes, or Read It Later. My overarching goal for this initiative is to highlight things that I want to read using these tools.
What will be in the McLeod Reads stream? As you might imagine, there will be a lot of stuff related to schools, technology, and/or leadership. But there also will be stuff related to social media, higher education, economics, politics, graphic design, law, publishing and journalism, ebooks, photography, and so on. Sometimes it will be a short blurb or quote that I think is especially noteable. Much of it will be longer-form reading like you might see at Longreads, The Browser, Longform, The Essayist, The Long Good Read, Give Me Something to Read, or The Atavist (you know, the stuff that you can really sink your teeth into).
So two Twitter feeds. What you see on @mcleodreads also will come through @mcleod. But most of what you see on @mcleod will never appear on @mcleodreads (i.e., no bookmarks, no unfiltered ‘bot’ tweeting, and no random conversations).
Will Richardson has his Instapaper feed. Carl Anderson has his Ed Tech Feeds twitter account. This is my attempt to create a purposeful, carefully-curated feed of some great reading. To start, I’ve loaded it up with some older posts and some things that caught my eye this morning (so apologies in advance if you’ve already seen much of what’s there now).
To see the unfiltered stream of what I’m sharing, subscribe to @mcleod. To see the unfiltered stream of what I’m reading, check out my shared feeds. But if you’re interested in a more curated experience, subscribe to @mcleodreads and try it out. Let me know what you think (good or bad). And we’ll see how this experiment goes.
Just a quick update… Six days after announcing my goal of identifying 500 school leadership blogs, we’re up to 402 submissions. Removing duplicates, that’s a total of about 330 school leadership blogs so far.
As I noted in my previous post:
I know that many of you will contribute out of the goodness of your heart. But, because 500 blogs is a very ambitious goal, I’ll sweeten the pot a little. The kind folks at Lenovo are going to let me give away a Lenovo m90z all-in-one desktop computer to anyone in the world who submits a school leadership blog using the form below. I’ll choose at random from all of the submissions. You get an extra chance for each blog you submit; the more you enter, the better your chance to win!
The form is below. The deadline is May 16. I’ll clean up the list of contributions and share it back out so that we all can make good use of them. Thanks to everyone who already has submitted an entry. If you know of a principal or superintendent or school administrator association who is blogging, your assistance would be greatly appreciated!
Does your local principal or superintendent blog? Do you read the blog of your local, state, or national school administrator association? Know of other blogs that are of interest to school leaders? I’m trying to collect 500 school leadership blogs in the next 10 days. Sure, there are some lists but they all need updating:
I know that many of you will contribute out of the goodness of your heart. But, because 500 blogs is a very ambitious goal, I’ll sweeten the pot a little. The kind folks at Lenovo are going to let me give away a Lenovo m90z all-in-one desktop computer to anyone in the world who submits a school leadership blog using the form below. I’ll choose at random from all of the submissions. You get an extra chance for each blog you submit; the more you enter, the better your chance to win!
FYI, the m90z is a pretty sweet machine (Lenovo sent me one to review first). The huge touch screen is very responsive. It would be a great home or classroom computer; my kids have taken to it like ducks to water. Here are a few pictures so that you can see what you might win and here are the technical specifications. Also, over the next few days check out these blogs for additional opportunities to score a m90z:
The form is below. The deadline is May 16. Thanks in advance for helping out. I’ll clean up the list of contributions and share it back out so that we all can make good use of them!
I watch principals or superintendents who tweet or blog a lot, and often I wonder what they could be doing in their building instead of that. In the blogosphere or twitterverse, there is a lot of self congratulatory back slapping in the education administration world with people who tweet and blog, but truth be told, the people running really tough schools (i.e. inner city, struggling to make AYP) don’t have time to do it.
What do you think? Are administrators who blog and Tweet self-absorbed and self-indulgent, gorging themselves on the Web and enhancing their own reputations at the potential expense of their school organizations? Is it true that administrators who are running ‘really tough schools’ can’t (or shouldn’t) blog and Tweet?
It’s spring training for Major League Baseball and that means it’s time for another season of edublogger fantasy baseball! Last year’s champions were Harold Shaw, Vinnie Vrotny, and – for the first time ever in more than 10 years of playing fantasy baseball - me! (we had enough participants for 3 leagues last year)
Same rules and league settings as the three previous years. A trophy for the winner(s). Friendly banter, potential bragging rights, and loads of baseball fun could be yours!
If you’re interested, complete the BlogBall11 online registration form no later than March 23, 2011. [UPDATE: BlogBall11 registration is now closed.] First come, first serve. You must have an active education blog to participate. We’ll make as many leagues as we can fill. Opening Day is March 31!
[sorry for the delay on this; it’s tough to type with a broken elbow!]
If you type www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org into your browser, you’ll see that Dangerously Irrelevant has a new home! I’m now hosted at BigThink, which is dedicated to deep thinking on important issues. If you’re not familiar with BigThink, I encourage you to check out the site a bit. It has video interviews with Nobel Prize winners, articles and other resources from global experts, special series on various issues, a number of different topical blogs, and lots of other cool stuff.
I’m delighted to be BigThink’s new (and only) education blogger. When we were discussing the potential move, I told the BigThink folks that sometimes I wasn’t very “deep” or “challenging” and that I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be “brainy” often enough to justify their choice. They said that they liked what I’d been doing and didn’t want me to change a thing. They also promised me that I wouldn’t lose any of my current subscribers and would get exposure to a whole new audience. That sounded okay with me, so we’re off on a new adventure!
For those of you who are regular readers, thanks for sticking with me. You shouldn’t see any major changes in your RSS reader or e-mail subscription (if you do, let me know ASAP!). You may have to set up new credentials to leave blog comments since it’s a new web site (sorry). For those of you who are longtime readers of BigThink but new to my blog, we’ll see if we can get you up to speed as quickly as possible.
As always, I greatly appreciate your readership. All my best.
SCOTT
P.S. I have a second big move to announce very soon. Stay tuned!
![BlogBall11 – Edublogger fantasy baseball returns for Year 4! [registration due March 23]](http://scottmcleod.org/BlogBall11.png)
