[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

On June 28, I invited
bloggers and readers to participate in Leadership Day on July 4.
Specifically, I asked participants of the blogosphere to write about effective
school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs, etc. A
variety of folks participated in the conversation:

• Jeanette
  Johnson listed her Top Ten (Not So Good) Reasons Why Educational Leaders
  Don’t Embrace Digital Technologies.
• Sylvia
  Martinez affirmed the importance of student leaders, saying that while we
  wonder where the future technology leaders ‘will come from, there they sit
  in front of us everyday, being ignored.’
• Chris Eldred has never
  worked under an administrator that made technology a priority of any kind. In
  fact, his current principal admits that e-mail isn’t a priority so no one
  e-mails her.
• Along the same lines, Max
  at backbythebell wondered what it will take before administrators
  see enough benefit in IT tools to actually promote their usage in schools.
• At Books
  and Bytes, RSS was identified as a perfect tool for job-embeddded training
  for administrators. An attempt also was made to aggregate
  all of the posts with the schooltechleadership
  tag.
• Susan
  Brooks-Young listed some technology tools that she regularly recommends to
  principals.
• Jennifer
  Lubke thinks that principals should let teachers count online participation
  in academic learning networks as required inservice hours.
• Gerald
  Ardito affirmed the importance of leadership when
  it comes to technology and was appreciative
  of being in an encouraging and supportive environment.
• Christopher
  Shively sadly noted that his university’s school administator certification
  program has had very little coverage of technology issues.
• Tracy
  Rosen recognized that she ‘can not expect the teachers … to try something
  new if [she is] not willing to learn as well.’
• Steve
  Poling thinks administrators should be actively reading blogs by other
  administrators, teachers, and even students.
• Similarly, VWB
  at A Library By Any Other Name highlighted a few blog posts that
  every administrator should read.
• Jason
  Bednar believes that there is a lot of power in using wikis.
• Carolyn
  Foote listed a number of different activities that can be used to facilitate
  technology conversations with administrators.
• Kyle
  Brumbaugh noted that he wants to be a leader that works to five education
  ‘independence from the industrial age.’
• The
  Coordinator’s Office described a successful technology training
  initiative that included administrators.
• Glenn Moses said that
  independence and school leadership ‘don’t seem to hang out too
  much.’
• Brandon
  Waggoner does not believe that administrators need to be tech-savvy
  themselves to be effective technology leaders.
• Doug
  Johnson helpfully listed some past articles and other resources on K-12
  technology leadership.
• Dana Huff said that
  ‘many administrators don’t see the need for certain uses of technoogy …
  because they felt they got on all right, thank you very much, without them, so
  why should others need them?’
• Ruth Okoye said
  that principals who are falling behind in technology should staff to their
  weakness and lead by example. She also listed some helpful things that even
  non-tech-savvy principals can do.
• Finally, my
  own post at the TechLearning blog emphasized the importance of appropriately
  designing professional development for administrators. (see also Patrick
  Higgins’ take on my list)

Thanks to everyone who contributed to Leadership
Day, including the numerous people who commented on the
invitation post, the TechLearning
blog, or Dangerously
Irrelevant. Maybe we’ll do it again next year!