With the coming of computers to schools, district leaders felt the need to hire district level administrators to oversee instructional and administrative computer systems. After about 30 years, some districts are finding that they can do without their own technology gurus. Has the school district technology director gone from life on the cutting edge of technology in education to obsolescence? The purpose of this article is to explore reasons why this may be the case.
Things Have Changed
At one point is was possible for at least a few educators to have a good grasp of what computer technology could do and understand what it took to maintain stand alone systems. With the advent of school and district-wide networks, however, there was a need to add network specialists to maintain the district infrastructure. As the number of workstations in classrooms and offices expanded, there was also a need for staff that were trained and dedicated to maintain them. This meant that the technology director was leading a growing staff of non educators at the same time computers and other technologies were expanding into every niche of the instructional program.
To some districts it makes no sense to have an administrator who was most likely a former teacher responsible for computer networks. Such networks now resemble other utilities such as electricity, natural gas, and telephone service. They can be purchased from a private vendor or from a local school district service bureau such as the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) system in New York State. As for administrative computer services, the software and support are purchased from somewhere. Rather than going through the technology director, the people responsible for the services like the director of attendance for student information, the principals for scheduling and mark reporting, and the business office for functions like payroll can just deal directly with the agency selling and supporting the service.
On the instructional side, the mere existence of a technology director can allow other leaders to think that they are not responsible for the integration of instructional technology. They see it as something separate rather than a part of the big instructional picture. When principals and teachers see instructional technology as someone else’s job, they are less likely to adopt in an effective manner anything that the “technology person” pushes into the classrooms.
The Great Enabler?
As the job of the technology director has been taken over by organizations like BOCES and other district administrators I have seen people in these position look for ways to be useful which can often enable bad habits among their fellow administrators. In one district I found the person helping the assistant superintendent for instruction count the number of days school had been in session to make sure that the end of year plan would comply with state regulations. His massive spreadsheet made the task seem complicated when all one needed to do what take a calendar and count up to 180.
Studies summarized by Rogers (2003) show that top down decisions are less likely to enjoy successful adoption in education than in other organizations. This is due to the fact that teachers with masters degrees think they know what they are doing and enjoy a sense of freedom that gives them a good deal of control over how they deliver the curriculum. In order to get teachers to implement a new technology effectively, it helps if they feel some ownership for the decision to adopt. The technology director may also be seen as a person who can do things with technology that are beyond most teachers. Teachers are more likely to follow a peer who they feel has technical expertise similar to their own.
In effective schools, decisions about instructional technology initiatives are more likely to come from district or building shared decision-making teams. This gives the decisions a bottom up aspect that increases the likelihood that they will work.
The Data Piece
Another function that can land in the technology director’s portfolio is that of chief information officer (CIO). This is a title that the New York State Education Department has asked districts to use so that they have an entry point for dealing with instructional data including scores on state tests. A look around the central New York region shows that this title can land just about anywhere. While some districts give it to an assistant superintendent, others bestow it on the technology director, and still others give it to a programmer, a teacher, or even a secretary.
In essence, this job has two main functions. One is to lead the district and the individual schools as they analyze test results and other instructional data in order to make informed instructional decisions. As Burdet, City, and Murname (2005) show, this is a job that should clearly run through the superintendent’s office and the offices of the principals and should involve committees of teachers. Giving it to some technology person may produce fancy charts and graphs, but it is not likely to make the kind of instructional impact that in intended.
The other part of the job is caring for the data itself and making sure it is correctly reported to the state in a timely manner. I did this for my former district during the year after I retired so I know what it involves and I have seen how many other districts deal with it. Whoever does it will need rudimentary data processing skills and a modest understanding of relational databases. It certainly should not fall to a high paid administrator. It could even be given to a capable clerk or sent to a regional support service.
All Administrators Should be Tech Savvy
As part of the work I do teaching leadership for teachers seeking administrative certification, I read the job postings each week in the New York Times. I look for common themes and trends so I can let my students know what districts are looking for in the way of knowledge, experience, and expertise in their new hires. Many ads contain a bulleted list of items that include communication skills, collaborative leadership styles, and a vision of how all students can succeed. For the last several years, however, they also usually include something like the following found in a recent posting:
Has expertise in the use of instructional technology and the utilization of achievement data to advance student learning
When microcomputers first entered the classroom in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, many of the members of the administrative class had attended college in a era where they could submit hand written work or pay someone else to do the typing. Even today I still know of administrators who don’t do email simply because they can’t use a keyboard. One even told me that he only wanted “one button to push.” You can imagine how happy he was when I set him up with a computer that had a one-button mouse.
Now the classes I teach feature some students who are almost digital natives as they don’t remember a time when their schools didn’t have computers. As more future leaders show up with computer skills, districts are in a position to expect that their new leaders can manage instructional technology without having to ask a district technology person what to do.
And a Child Shall Lead Them
In 1976 when my district got its first computer, I was the science department chair. I had no time to figure out how it worked so I let some of my students who had an interest “play” with it. I soon became the “adult” expert even though I knew less than the students and within two years became the district computer director. Two years later I was hired by a larger district as their first Director of Computer Services with a big raise and an office next to the superintendent.
As part of my doctoral research I noticed that teachers who learned from their students were often the ones who did the most with instructional technology. With the coming of the Internet, the students had easy access to the world of information which made finding facts like shooting sitting ducks (McKenzie, 1998). As one superintendent told me, “we don’t own the information any more” (Green, 2001).
I recently worked with a doctoral student who was reviewing her work from the early 1990s. This prompted me to make a list of the technological innovations that have arrived since 1991 that I felt were likely to have some impact on instruction.
New Technologies with Possible Impact on Education Since 1991
1991 QuickTime Introduced
1991 First Smartboard becomes commercially available
1994 Netscape 1.0 browser available for Internet surfing
1995 The first Internet Wiki
1996 Cell phones become common in United States
1996 First Mobile cell phone with built-in PDA
1996 Hotmail – Free web-based email for anyone
1996 Java and Javascript programming languages add applications to the Web
1998 The First web log also known as a blog
1999 QuickTime 4.0 supports streaming video
1999 Macromedia Flash 4.0 handles inputs and MP3 audio files
1999 iMovie is free with iMac purchase
2000 Google – The world’s search engine
2000 Instant Messaging starts to take off
2000 PayPal makes it easy and safe to pay for Internet purchases
2001 Douglas Green uses speech recognition to transcribe dissertation interviews
2001 iPods and iTunes become available
2001 Text messaging starts to take off
2002 USB flash drive memory cards become available
2002 The term is Blogoshpere adopted to represent the world of blogs on the Internet
2004 Facebook & Myspace make social networking more available
2004 Podcasting allows new form for media distribution
2004 Duke University gives an iPod to each freshman
2004 GarageBand allows for easier music editing
2005 Eye tracking systems become available for disabled
2005 RSS (real simple syndication) adds a new type of spam
2005 Guitar Hero joins the gaming culture
2005 YouTube allows anyone to publish and access videos
2006 PornoTube adds to the worries of parents and teachers
2006 Student Response Systems (clickers) become affordable for educational use
2006 Flickr available to customers in United States for storing and organizing media
2006 Skype becomes available for free calls and video conferencing
2006 Sherburne/Earlville, NY Schools place a SmartBoard in every classroom
2006 Wii adds a physical aspect to gaming
2006 Twitter adds yet another type of spam for Internet and cell phone users
2007 Wikipedia becomes the largest encyclopedia ever with more than 2 million articles
2007 iPhones are introduced bringing countless capabilities to cell phone users
2009 A USB flash drive costs about $20 for one gigabyte
A look at this list should lead one to think that many students are more comfortable with some of this technology than their teachers. I have had many of my administrative students tell me that they would be lost were it not for the computer help they get from their own teenage children.
When a technology innovation comes to the classroom by way of the technology director it is likely to focus on the technology. When it arrives as the result of initiatives owned by the teachers, it is more likely to focus on the content. An example from the art department that I have seen in many schools makes this point. If computers in the art rooms have a technology focus the likely result will be courses that teach how to use software such as Photoshop and Illustrator. If the computers are introduced by the art teachers they are more likely to use these tools to focus on artistic concepts and to promote artistic craft.
This month, for example, the magazine Edutopia (Bernard, 2009) has a cover story about an article where students offer lesson plan ideas that feature items from my list. My point here is that any school district looking for ideas about instructional technology is unlikely to get all they need from a single source technology director.
Goodbye Wizard of Oz.
Once a district decides to eliminate the technology director position the next questions is what happens to the person in that position. If the person is seen as bright, hard working, and knowledgeable they can be moved to other positions of leadership. Depending on their talents they might make successful principals or assistant superintendents, which are much better positions from which to promote the use of instructional technology. They might also return to the classroom where they can become a model for innovation technology use. They may be able to retire as I have seen in several local districts or they might be able to secure employment with one of the district’s technology vendors or the local school-support agency.
In 1993 when I held this position I was able to un-invent myself by convincing the superintendent that the administrative and network supervision aspects of my job could be sent to our local BOCES and that the responsibility for the instructional piece should be placed in the hands of the building principals who could look to a district level staff developer for support when they needed to help their staff learn how to use new technology. At the time, the district saved $35,000 as a result of this move.
I should also point out that a reason for making my job disappear was so that I could become a principal in a building were the decision making team had a strong interest in moving ahead with instructional technology initiatives. My goal in writing this article, therefore, is not to put my fellow directors out of work by making them look like modern versions of the Wizard of Oz. My goal is to help schools make more effective use of their technology dollars as they empower all administrators, teachers, and even students in finding ways to allow instructional technology to facilitate and motive all learners. A job that has become impossible for one person can become possible once it is viewed as everyone’s job.
References
Bernard, S. (2009). Kids Talk Tech. Edutopia. June/July 2009, 22-27.
Boudett, K. P., City, E. A., & Murname, R. J. Eds. (2004). Data Wise: A Step by Step Guild to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning. Harvard Education Press: Cambridge, MA.
Green, D. W. (2001). The Impact of Internet Access of Elementary Classroom Teaching: A Constructivist Perspective. (Doctoral Dissertation, Binghamton University, Dissertation Abstracts International, 63 no. 01A(2001): p 151.
McKenzie, J. (1998). Grazing the Net: Raising a Generation of Free-Range Students, Phi Delta Kappan, 80(1), 26-31.
Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed. Free Press: New York, NY.
Douglas W. Green, Ed.D., was an administrator for 30 years and has 300+ publications in technology, education, and leadership. He retired to care for his wife who had Lou Gehrig’s disease and started blogging after her recent death. His blog at DrDougGreen.com features book summaries and news items that makes it easy for busy educators to keep up to date.
First, I'd like to thank Scott for hosting me as part of my virtual tour to support The Best of Learning & Leading with Technology. You can follow the entire tour at Ed Tech Jen. To thank you for taking the time to find out a little about me and about the book, I'll be giving away a copy of the book to one lucky commenter.
Technology Mentoring
In pulling together this collection of the best articles from a five-year span of Learning & Leading with Technology, I looked for three things:
Articles that were compelling to read.
Articles that many of our readers responded to, nominated for the collection on The Best of L&L blog, or had included in course packets.
Articles that contained ideas that transcended specific technologies or educational settings.
One article that really stood out in the technology leadership area was "Teacher to Teacher Mentoring" by Kathleen Gora and Janice Hinson. (ISTE members can read this article here.)
Gora and Hinson described a program in their school where the more-experienced technology users helped teach their fellow teachers to integrate specific technologies into their instruction. They found much better results from these mentorships than from other professional development methods they had tried in their school.
One of the nice things about this program was that it had the deep support of the principal. This was really a key component of its success, and the main reason that the program is still in effect today.
When I contacted many of the authors whose works are included in the book, they shared a different result. Some had retired, and some had moved into other educational settings where technology use was not as well supported. Those who were still teaching used many of the same pedagogical techniques, but were unable to include the technology component. Thus, the fact that the program described in this article is still active is notable.
One of the compelling points for me was that this school had taken a solid teaching truth and applied it to itself. We know that students learn a topic really well when they have to teach it to their fellow students. So it makes sense that teachers who have to train other teachers in a technology integration technique or the use of an application would learn it better than if they were just using it personally.
What about you. Have you used mentoring in your educational setting? If so, what sort of process have you used to group mentors and mentees and to assign topics of study? How do assess the effectiveness of the mentorship?
Have you taken any other tenet of effective student learning and applied it to teacher professional development or to your own professional learning? How has it worked? Have you thought about sharing that idea with other technology leaders?
About Jennifer Roland
Jennifer is a writer living in the Portland, Oregon, area. She holds bachelor’s degrees in magazine journalism and political science from the University of Oregon. Her education also focused on history, economics, linguistics, and educational policy and management. Before embarking on her freelance career, she was a staff member at ISTE. Follow Jennifer on her blog tour at http://edtechjen.com; each tour stop includes a chance to win a copy of The Best of Learning & Leading with Technology.
ISTE’s flagship magazine, Learning & Leading with Technology, is where the organization’s members and industry experts share and discuss the latest and greatest in using technology to enhance education. This collection includes the very best articles from 2003-2008. Along with the articles as they originally appeared in the magazine, the book includes commentary and context introducing the articles as well as short essays from the original authors, who further discuss the issues and topics of their articles and how they’ve affected the ed tech world.
[W]e believe that we are only at the beginning of the web’s impact on the fundamental structure of education. We expect much of that change to be away from the existing educational institutions and towards empowering individuals and newly-formed groups.
[T]he vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Today, it is the reverse. All of the most interesting stuff is being built first for consumers and is tricking back to the enterprise. . . . [O]ne reason this is happening is that the success of a web service is more often determined by its social engineering than its electrical engineering.
Students aren’t the only ones missing the big picture
The Florida Department of Education is concerned that students are missing the big picture when it comes to science. A task force stated that “teachers should provide a broader focus on scientific concepts and process in a ‘big picture’ sense.” Hmmm… I wonder if that means the Department is going to narrow down the list of required science standards and also pare down the size of approved textbooks. I’m guessing not. Download the full report if you dare.
What is your favourite form of online synchronous communication? I am pondering this today as I write the 5th and final blog post as guest blogger on Dangerously Irrelevant. As I much as I love and become immersed in the asynchronous communication modes of being online there is nothing better than a quick fix or an interaction or meeting that is in real time. Let me share with you some methods I have used recently for real-time (synchronous) communications.For a start there is always GChat! using GMail and having access to friends and colleagues around the world via the chat facility gives me a warm glow (you too?). For example, this screen shot was taken today. The different colours represent online activity: Green (online), Red (online but busy), Orange (online but away from computer), and Grey (has been online recently but gone now). It is early Saturday morning here in Qatar as I write this so I can see that Vicki has probably gone to bed in Georgia, my friend in India has gone out shopping, Elizabeth and Dean are possibly still awake in the USA, Judy in Australia is up but busy, Saad is up and online in Dhaka, David in Singapore, and Chris in France…well it’s early in the morning for him but he is often online at odd hours. What an international group I have represented here! Advantages of GChat: archive of chats stored in ‘Chats’ mailbox. Message can be sent to a person not online, they will receive it later.
Skype of course has to come next! What a wonderful tool. I use Skype in the classroom, I use Skype to communicate with family and friends around the world. Here is a link to an article I wrote for ISTE’s Learning and Leading with Technology magazine Using VoIP to Foster Connectivity and Communication. It is also reproduced here on my wiki. Advantages of Skype: Can include video and text-chat and audio chat, can include a group of up to 9 people. A Skypecast can include a lot more! Skype calls can be recorded using applications such as PowerGramo or Pretty May.
Another tool, UStream, is being used by many educators to share, once again in real time initially, what they are presenting, thinking, or discussing. This image is from Educon 2.0 in January. George Mayo presented on global collaboration and Skyped a few of us in to his presentation, which he also had running through UStream. This shows George in conversation with Clarence Fisher. The Skype calls and conversation were seamless and George was adept at directing the live audience as well as the virtual audience along a path of exploration.
I am really loving Elluminate this year. The facility of audio, chat, whiteboard combined with being able to import PPT files and images, videos, take polls etc etc means it is a very powerful tool for synchronous work. Yes, I know it is expensive for a school, however don’t forget the free V-Room that will take 3 people and is fully functional.
It is through Elluminate that we run the student summits for Flat Classroom Project. Each student and teacher in the summit prepares a JPG file and uploads it ready to talk to the images on the file that represent their work and experiences. Advantages of Elluminate: Video of presenter possible, audio of one or more participants, back-channel chat.
Student from LACHSA presenting in Elluminate (Flat Classroom 2007)
I cannot finish this post without mentioning Twitter. Yes, I know this is strictly not synchronous however often it feels like it! For example this morning I tweeted this:
To which I received these responses:
and also a direct message via Twitter from @mohamed: "instant messenger because of presence and ability to have trusted connections. Now if only it was integrated with SMS"
My Twitter community is always there for me. Learn more about Twitter, find more Twitter resources. Follow me on Twitter. Advantages of Twitter: micro-blogging with usually fast response from followers, able to share ideas without getting into a ‘real conversation’, archives all tweets, integrates with mobile phone technology.
Also, to share another synchronous online experience…….Not long ago
I also had the opportunity to be part of a ‘fishbowl’ classroom
project. Karl Fisch sent me an invitation to ‘live blog’ with students at Arapahoe High School as they discuss Dan Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind.
A class blog post had been set up and as we listened to the live
conversation by the ‘inner circle’ the outer circle (educators and
outer students) posted comments to this post. We used an online tool
called MeBeam with success to webcam the educators and the physical classroom together. Here is an image of participants using MeBeam with the blog comment window open as well. Julie Lindsay, guest blogger
[A special thank you to Scott McLeod for inviting me to be guest presenter over the past week. This has been quite a challenge and I have appreciated the opportunity to put more extended blog posts together.]
I have been reflecting on global collaboration and what it means for teachers, students and the wider community. I have also been reflecting on sustainability of online spaces and how much of what we are ‘producing’ in terms of creative output has not been preserved over the past 15 years. Let me be more specific.
For the past 12 years I have participated in online global projects with my students. In 1996, my school in Australia, Eltham College, received an Honorable Mention in the Environmental Awareness section of the International Cyberfair project (organised by the Global School Net). This project had an amazing affect on our school community. To be able to publish images, sounds (yes, we even got up at dawn and recorded the Australian bird song as the day begins to upload), ideas and thoughts from our part of the world and share them internationally was an amazing achievement in the early days of he Internet. In fact many of us got up at 5am (pre-dawn!) to come to school and listen to the Cyberfair awards ceremony that year (at a reasonable time in the USA of course) that included an opening address from Al Gore. Those were the days. Alas, the website for this project is gone, changes in school server and ISP hosting etc etc have deleted it long ago.
In my first 5 years as an international educator I ran Learning Circle projects with classes in Zambia and Kuwait as part of the iEARN initiative. These involved grouping 6 or so classrooms from around the world into a ‘project’ that was self-determined according to curriculum section. The outcome from the interaction was often a hard-copy publication or a website. I still have two of the ‘books’ produced during these years with students writings and ideas from the various international locations. I am excited to see that iEARN are now in Qatar and promoting collaborative projects in this region.
When I moved to Bangladesh and International School Dhaka we participated in the 2004 international School’s Cyberfair and won the Platinum (first prize) in the Environmental Awareness section for Poribesh Bachan (Bangla for being aware, taking action). Once again this was a community project and we had great fun compiling images and records of the current environmental state of Dhaka and initiatives that were moving it forward at that time. Alas, this website is not available online anymore.
In the past 18 months I have been a co-founder (with Vicki Davis) of the Flat Classroom Project and Horizon Project and global collaboration as I knew it suddenly took on a whole new dimension. I have written about this new ‘Global Collaboration 3.0‘ earlier however let me make some salient points here as to why we now have a whole new focus for online collaborative projects and what that means for education.
Web 2.0 has changed the online world making interaction and collaboration easier. Instant publication via a wiki, social networking via a Ning (see flat classroom Ning) have brought people (teachers and students) together as they have never been before
In global collaboration 3.0 here are high expectations for connectivity and communication with a true ‘flat classroom’ setup where teachers and students are on the same level and with the focus on student-centered learning
Global collaborative projects need to be embedded into the curriculum. We need to be looking at how students can have experiential learning opportunities at all levels of education. As a middle and high school specialist I expect my students to have had at least one global project experience before they leave Primary school, and then to have at least one global project experience each year of middle and high school. I do not think this is unreasonable or unrealistic
We need to continue (or start) to foster technology integration as part of what we do in schools. Gone are the days where students come to the computer lab. to do IT. Moving towards 1:1 mobile computing programs is a start, providing professional development for teachers in embedding IT into their curriculum is even more important, providing the support via integration facilitators is also essential. Facilitators must have a no-class load within a school and could be IT and/or library/media specialist or strong curriculum specialists comfortable with online tools and Web 2.0
We need to be unblocking viable connectivity tools so that digital access and participation is available for all classrooms around the world. Can we get governments and school organizations to talk about this at the same table? Can we develop a set of essential tools that ALL schools around the world access in order to communicate?
We need to be developing digital citizenship skills and courses within schools, starting once again at the Primary/Elementary school level. It is so important to be able to work professionally online and to understand the dynamics of online communication. This does not come easily to most beginners. Students who are perhaps used to being online via Facebook or MySpace have a perspective of how to be social but not professional online communicators. There is a difference and we need to highlight this.
We need to be investigating sustainability of online spaces and archiving successfully projects and collaborations. Currently we use wikispaces and ning (amongst others of course)….will these still be around in 5 years time? If not, what happens to the amazing content and productivity from classrooms all around the world? Will it be lost for ever?
I have a strong belief in the power of online connectivity and global collaboration (in all of it’s many forms) at the school level to make a difference to the world we live in through fostering better understanding and cultural awareness. These are not just words. I have seen this happen through the projects I have run with my own classes.
What is your 2020 vision for global collaboration? Do you have a global collaboration on your horizon? I invite you to join our Flat Classroom Ning, Horizon Project Ning and also to have a look at our current project just starting, Horizon Project 2008, where we have 11 classrooms and over 250 students from Australia, Austria, Japan, Spain, Qatar and the USA.
This is my third blog post as the guest of the week so I thought it was time I introduced myself a little more and talked about where I currently live and work. As you can tell by my accent, I am from Melbourne, Australia but have been working and traveling as an international educator for over 10 years, along with my husband (mathematics teacher) and daughter (just hit the terrible teen years!). Places I have worked are Zambia, Kuwait, Bangladesh and now Qatar. Being our first year in Qatar we are finding our new school, Qatar Academy, challenging in many ways. However I am finding my new position as Head of Information Technology and E-Learning to be a wonderfully rewarding experience with lots of amazing opportunities to contribute to the growth of the school.
I am also responding to Scott’s post earlier today, The World is Spiky, where he shares some interesting insights from Richard Florida’s new book Who’s your city. From reading the words of Florida I think Qatar is in fact a ‘tall spike’ in an unflat world. Definition of this: "the tallest spikes that attract global talent, generate knowledge, and produce the lion’s share of global innovation." Qatar is an amazing place to be working right now. I found a blog post from last September after just arriving on ‘Sharing an amazing vision in Qatar‘ in which I wrote:
Here in Qatar I work atQatar Academy, a PreK-12 school now delivering the IBO curriculum across all levels (PYP, MYP and DP) which is located on Education City, a large campus on the outskirts of Doha. However I work forQatar Foundation
(QF) for Education, Science and Community Development. QF represents
the innovation and creativity of His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa
Al Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar. QF is a non-profit organisation
and was founded in 1995, and Education City is their flagship.
I also wrote:
The
vision and commitment to excellence in education here is amazing. The
money being spent and the rate of development is staggering. QF is the
driving force behind the countries commitment to education and to Qatar
becoming one of the most developed knowledge-based societies around the
world. To do this they are partnering with international educational
institutions, supporting higher research and contributing to community
health and development programs. Her Highness, Sheikha Mozah Bint
Nasser Al Missned, Consort of His Highness, serves as the chairperson
of QF and personally guides the organisation with passion, vision and
enthusiasm.
Since September the pace of change and development has increased if anything. Education City is like a construction zone, with a new academic medical center, a new library, a new convention center, an amazing equestrian center and many other buildings going up….and fast! In a recent article in the New York Times talking about the rush of American universities to set up in global locations it stated:
And many are now considering full-fledged foreign branch campuses,
particularly in the oil-rich Middle East. Already, students in the
Persian Gulf state of Qatar can attend an American university without the expense, culture shock or post-9/11 visa problems of traveling to America.
At
Education City in Doha, Qatar’s capital, they can study medicine at
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, international affairs at
Georgetown, computer science and business at Carnegie Mellon, fine arts
at Virginia Commonwealth, engineering at Texas A&M, and soon, journalism at Northwestern.
Education City, the largest enclave of American universities overseas,
has fast become the elite of Qatari education, a sort of local Ivy League. But the five American schools have started small, with only about 300 slots among them for next year’s entering classes.
In Doha, since I was last there, a skyline that looks like a
mini-Manhattan has sprouted from the desert. Whatever construction
cranes are not in China must be in Doha today. This once sleepy harbor
now has a profile of skyscrapers, thanks to a huge injection of oil and
gas revenues.
Then there are the other Qatari government initiatives in education from ICT Qatar that include e-Education and the e-Schoolbag program amongst other programs. I visited the new boys school rolling out the e-Schoolbag Tablet PC implementation and was duly impressed. There are many international consultants and educators currently working in Qatar, advising the government and supporting the vision with extra expertise and knowledge.
Qatar is determined to be a ‘knowledge society’ and with that vision in mind are carefully planning their approach to education. Yes, this is the Middle East and there are certain cultural sensitivities (aren’t there any where in the world?) however I am finding a certain liberal attitude and a genuine desire to move forward. At a recent parent-teacher conference (Qatar Academy has about 85% Arabic students) I was pleasantly surprised at the friendly parents who not only wanted to shake my hand (remember that it is not always acceptable for men to shake a woman’s hand here) but also called me by my first name.
So what does this all mean for the rest of the world?……well I suggest you all keep a close eye on Qatar. This is not a flash in the pan, this is a carefully calculated and planned development that is already making waves and impacting around the world. We have Al Jazeera news, we have Doha Debates, we had the Asian games 2006 and we are bidding for the Olympics for 2016. We have a clean city (I have just been to Mumbai and was brought back to the reality of a large, dirty city..what does Florida call them? ‘third-world megacities’), albeit a little sandy some days. Qatar really is a ‘tall spike in an unflat world’ and despite the environmental concerns caused by over-indulgence (thanks Tom for reminding us), it is a beehive for creativity, innovation and 21st century thinking.
In the words of Sheikha Mozah: "Today we plant seeds, tomorrow we open frontiers, tomorrow is rooted here".
Photo of Doha city skyline, taken late 2007
Animoto of a recent ‘dune bashing’ trip in the desert
Change is a process in a school. Change is neither good nor bad but
just is. Rapid change can cause discomfort and upset. No change can
also cause discomfort and upset. Any educational institution that is
not going through some form of change right now is possible missing the
boat, or at least missing the opportunity to create their own boat and
sail on the sea of individualized, student-centered, technology
embedded learning.
In
the international school world change often comes in measured doses
lasting for the length of a contract (2 years minimum usually). Change
can be personality driven, more rapid and possibly more adhoc in this
realm of education given the desire of individuals to want to make
their mark and then move onto another international school and start
the process again. For the vast majority of expatriate teachers the
results of visionary new programs and curriculum implementations will
not be fully seen by the instigators, as they will be long gone, with
new teachers and administrators in place trying to move forward with an
altered vision, a newly tweaked plan and new enthusiasm. This is not
abnormal and yet it can be frustrating for the school as a whole as
programs come and go and initiatives are sparked and then put out.
A colleague lent me a book last week called "What’s worth fighting for in your school?"
Published in 1996, it talks about the culture of a school and
transforming schools into better places. It got me thinking about how
teaching can be a lonely profession and that building the culture of
collaboration is a challenge. It also got me to thinking about how now,
12 years later, what has changed are the tools that we now use to
foster collaboration but not necessarily the conditions under which
collaboration, risk-taking and change can successfully take place. So
what are these essential conditions for success within a school that
are worth fighting for in the environment of 21st century learning?
At a recent conference, the ECIS / ISTE IT Leadership conference,
in Prague other IT leaders along with ISTE leaders Don Knezek and Lynn
Nolan, discussed essential conditions for successful change and how
these can be extrapolated into a leadership action plan. This is my
summary/interpretation and what I think is worth fighting for in my
school:
A shared vision:
what has shifted in education over the past five years and how has
technology advanced and supported this? Proactive leadership can bring
together a school community to share a vision for transforming learning.
Strategic planning:
systemic and aligned with a shared vision for school effectiveness and
student learning through the infusion of technology and digital
resources
Understanding learning and leading in a digital age:
It is through better understanding of how learners have changed, how
the learning environment has changed, how the curriculum has changed
that we can best plan for effective reform across the school
Professional learning communities:
now this is one I am already fighting for. Encouraging conversations,
supporting adoption of new techniques, encouraging sharing of ideas,
resources and best-practice
One-to-onecomputing:
mobility and ubiquity is the only way to go but this needs to be
supported through funding for devices and for professional development.
Not everyone yet sees the value in having a computing tool in hand
Online learning community:
for students, for teachers, for administrators and for the wider school
community. This can be fostered through supporting technologies
including Web 2.0 tools. However the tool is insignificant (to an
extent), it is the interaction and potential for continuous improvement
and perpetual learning that is the ultimate promise here
Team-based professional development: Social learning and community-based exploration of new ideas for learning
Sustainability:
OK, this is a big one. We need to build in sustainability so that valid
programs are able to survive leadership and other changes. At the same
time we need to build in flexibility so that plans can be tweaked if
needed to cater for changing technologies, local emphasis etc.
I was reminded coincidently today of a video a student in my class in Bangladesh created for the Horizon Project 2007.
If you overlook some poor technical quality, ESL spelling and grammar
and actually absorb the message this video has a lot to say about
change, where we have come from with educational technology and where
we could be going. Called ‘The Future is Now‘, it was part of the ‘User created content’ section of the project.
From the book again: "What is worth fighting for is not to allow our organizations to be negative by default but to make them positive by design"
What do you think is worth fighting for in your school?
My
life as an international educator is bursting with exciting
opportunities and experiences. Being a guest blogger for Dr Scott
McLeod is one challenge I have been looking forward to. As a leader in
educational technology I blog about my own journey in the classroom as
well as interactions and collaborations with colleagues around the
world and try to make sense of the changing learning landscape.
Recently I have had the opportunity to attend in person conferences in Madrid, Prague and Mumbai. I have also been able to attend virtually a number of online events/conferences, in particular EduCon 2.0, where I was Skyped in by George Mayo to discuss global collaboration and the amazing CUE 2008 this past weekend where I was Skyped in by Steve Hargadon to a session discussing Web 2.0 in Education. I have been reflecting on what it means to be a 21st century conference attendee and presenter at, as it is being called, Conference 2.0.
Gone are the days when information is only delivered via the conference
presenter and only at the conference. Gone are the days where
information is uni-directional and non-conversational. Gone are the
days when information is delivered via hard-copy handout and boring
bullet-points on a ubiquitous slideshow.
To be a leader in
education today means to be a contributor, not a passive onlooker. A
‘conference’ opportunity is to be embraced for all of the dynamic
cross-links and flowing ideas it brings. Let’s use Web 2.0 tools and
what ever else we can online to enhance and extend the experience and
learning.
So what does a Conference 2.0 look like? On one level
it has presenters who have set up learning experiences and objects
ahead of time including posting resources online and organizing virtual
input via Skype and chat etc. Let me tell a story here and then give
credit to some great colleagues out there who are already writing about
this in a more succinct way than I am.
My experience at the ASB Unplugged
conference in Mumbai, India recently highlighted the need to be mobile,
online and interacting at different levels. Connected to the WLAN and
therefore with connectivity to the world (the only way to be at a
conference!) I was able to ‘moblog’ to our school Ning (mobile blogging, or blogging on the run, a phrase coined by David Warlick I believe), Twitter,
Google Chat and search for resource URLs as presenters mentioned
them…all at the same time. In one session I remember Twittering with Kim Cofino, who was also attending a conference in Berlin, Germany, while at the same time chatting with Vicki Davis, who was also at a conference presenting on our Flat Classroom Project and more in Illinois ICE
and wowing the crowd with her exemplary style and sharing her latest
Zoho online material with me, while continuing to blog and interact
with people back at Qatar Academy via the Ning and also with people
around me re the current presentation in Mumbai.
What I really
missed in Mumbai was what is called a ‘backchannel’ where the audience
(real and virtual) can chat about the presentation. An effective way to
do this is to have the backchannel (using a tool such as chatzy.com)
projected onto the screen so the whole room can see what is being said
(including the presenter) and react to it as needed. This method was
also used by Karl Fisch, although using slightly different tools, for his fishbowl sessions with students and guests discussing Pink’s ‘A Whole New Mind’ recently.
What
I also miss at non-Conference 2.0 events is the use of RSS as the glue
to bind us all together. Once again David Warlick leads the way with
his hitchhikr.com conference
aggregator. I need to know where I can find other blog posts, images,
etc tagged for the events I am in. I need to know what the tagging
standard is so I can use it. I feel this still has not caught on with
educators around the world as it should have done.
I am in awe of the recent blog post by Steve Hargadon detailing his views and experiences with Conference 2.0 ideals and thoroughly recommend his new wiki Conference 2.0
where, in typical Steve style he has provided a valuable resource and
service for everyone to use when attending/presenting at a conference.
Describing this wiki he states:
Web 2.0 has provided a number of
opportunities for new collaborative events to take place at and around
conferences. The events can enhance participants’ connections, dialog,
and engagement. Here are a number of these activities that can be
planned specifically for educational technology.
So,
it is true, the global stage does await every real and virtual attendee
at a conference. There are opportunities to foster and continue
conversations, make connections, squeeze the essence out of each
session and breath life into the topic. Is this information overload?
Is this too geeky for the average conference goer….well yes, maybe it
is however let’s lead the way, let’s set the standards internationally
and move beyond the static, dry, hard-copy handout, non-Internet based
session that does not deserve to exist in the Conference 2.0 mode.
We’ve had an incredible run of guest bloggers here at Dangerously Irrelevant. Many thanks to Jason Dyer, my latest guest, who sparked a lot of conversation and gave us much to think about regarding the intersections of math and technology.
You can see the contributions of all of my guest bloggers by clicking on the Guest Bloggers category. If you’re
interested in being a
guest blogger yourself, let me know!
Now, this may seem like I’m contradicting the opinion of the guest blogger last week. However, I’m not referring to the endless pursuit of rankings and grades.
In most of the work on social technology I’ve been reading, it’s paired with the word "cooperation". What happened to competition? Why is it so wrong?
This concerns me because mathematics is particularly suited to competition. Some competitions are downright legendary. Solving problems in high-level math competitions can lead to thinking that shatters the hierarchy of intelligences, creating wonderful things I still don’t fully understand.
I simply implore technology coordinators: please consider the possibilities competition can offer.
…
Goodness, it’s been a week already? I feel like I’ve just nicked the surface of this territory. I’ll try to continue with things I couldn’t fit next week at my blog. I’d like to thank everyone for their comments; I learned much more than I ever suspected possible, and I’ll be closely following this blog and others for new developments.
