Leadership Day Post (a little bit late)

Last week, I received a very nice email from an administrator who attended my "Building 21st Century Learning Communities" workshop on July 9th. The email read:

"Daniel, Yesterday's workshop was eye opening, exciting, wowing and indicative of the potential that can be accessed. During the 1st week in August, we are going to be in school preparing for the new school year. We would like you to come in early August to help begin our process with this initiative."

My reasons for sharing this email are two-fold: First, I want to commend this school leader for looking inward and recognizing an opportunity for change. On the flip side, there is that pestering voice in my head that questions whether or not this learning community is ready to put in the work that it takes to move forward as a 21st century teaching and learning community. As Douglas B. Reeves states in the introduction of his book, Leading Change in Your School, "Educational leaders are expert in announcing change, scattering the seeds of promising ideas. But they are considerably less adept at moving aside the initiatives of the previous year so that the seeds of the new announcement have the slightest opportunity to take root." Many times, school leadership teams might abandon a new initiative because of the numerous constraints inherent in running a school. This happens time and time again, which is why it is important to have someone in place within the school (lead teacher, administrator, consultant, etc.) directly responsible for ensuring that the school has what Reeves calls a "meaningful implementation."

Fortunately, there are frameworks currently in place like the National Education Technology Standards which school leaders can use as a helpful guide in monitoring their learning community's progress. The first standard in the newly refreshed NETS for Administrators falls under the category of "Visionary Leadership". Perfect. This standard pushes administrators to create and implement "a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology to promote excellence and support transformation throughout the organization."

In my last post I talked about the importance of creating a vision for technology integration. The next step after creating that shared vision is to develop specific goals to help achieve that vision. Finally, each goal requires an action plan to assist in the implementation and assessment of each goal. Once those action plans are created and roles are assigned and deadlines are created I firmly believe that a school has a real chance for success. The key, as Performance Indicator B states is to: "engage in an ongoing process to develop, implement, and communicate technology-infused strategic plans aligned with a shared vision." During the workshop, I discussed how using a shared learning application like Google Docs could allow for this process to become much more transparent. If everyone is truly invested in the process then the document will begin to take on a life of its own. We will see comments about the progress; arguments over the vision; goals that are timely, and on it goes until it catches on like wild fire, and the spirit of the document becomes contagious.

I have seen this type of change in practice take effect in several schools I worked in throughout the past two school years. It just so happened that Google Docs was the glue that brought us all together. But the real change came from the people invested in the process, and the tool simply gave us the means to achieve our goals. Once the key stake holders are on board driving this change a "common language" connected to the vision begins to emerge, and with that in mind the schools finds itself in a ripe opportunity -- ready for lift off.

As Editorial Director for The Journal, Geoffrey H. Fletcher states, "Many US schools are on the cusp of greatness. Robust deployment of technology, effective professional development, informed use of data, and close connections to parents and community at large are the hallmarks of these campuses." I agree with Fletcher, but I also believe there is no one size fits all model for this type of transformation. However, a collective vision that evokes shared responsibility, high expectations, and accountability certainly plays a large part in actualizing that vision.That alone is a challenging task. Clearly, there is a lot of work to be done. But the key is working smarter, not harder. Let's get moving.

*This post was inspired by Scott McLeod's Leadership Day 2009 Challenge. Unfortunately, I did not make the July 11th deadline.

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Leadership Day 2009 -- Some Prep

I just came across an interesting challenge on Scott McLeod's blog, Dangerously Irrelevant, in which he is calling on edubloggers across the globe to share their thoughts "related to effective school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs, wants, etc." As this is is a big part of my job as an educational technology consultant -- I owe it to myself to participate in this conversation.

Mr. McLeod speaks from his heart when he expresses that many administrators just don't get it. I believe the 'it' he is speaking of refers to driving systemic change with a focus on 21st century teaching and learning. This is not about pointing fingers, and Mr. McLeod clearly states that many of these administrators simply do not have the time, background or support to move forward in this direction. In his experience he sees that:

"most school administrators don’t know

• what it means to prepare students for the 21st century;
• how to recognize, evaluate, and facilitate effective technology usage by students and teachers;
• what appropriate technology support structures (budget, staffing, infrastructure) 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…"

Tomorrow, I am facilitating a workshop for NYC administrators entitled "Building 21st Century Learning Communities". The workshop is a 3-hour session that attempts to hit on many of the bullet points that Mr. McLeod so eloquently articulated. I'm going to attempt to raise awareness about how the effective use of technology can transform teaching and learning. I'm going to point out that there are national standards and frameworks that are all ready in place that can help schools rethink their notion of technology integration. I'm going to say: "It's all about the learning and not the technology."

I am also going to try and get the participants excited about going back to their schools to rethink their vision for technology integration. I want to inspire them to put together an "Innovation" team that will write a vision for technology usage that will be embraced by their entire learning community (students, teachers, parents, etc.). The Innovation Team will work throughout the year to assess where their school is at in terms of technology usage. The team will use the data from their assessments to create long-term goals, and each goal will require an action plan. All of this work has to be timely, measurable, and collaborative.

I plan to use tomorrow's workshop as a starting point for my Leadership Day blog. As we review the new National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators I'm going to ask the participants what they see as the key skills or abilities they need to be effective technology leaders? I'm going to collect their ideas as best I can, while trying to manage a room of 40 teachers and administrators, and then I'm going to write about the experience with the hope of pushing some boundaries and stimulating some conversation for Leadership Day 2009. Plain and simple.