[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!
Thanks, Scott, for creating this thread, and for pulling all these posts together which will be handy for all of us to use!
I wish I had known about this and I would have submitted a blog I recently wrote. This is good though and I’ll check it out …