Teacher Leadership to Effect Change in Education
July 28, 2008
Leadership is a major theme on most educator’s minds.
A typical example of school leadership usually involves an enlightened principal, or great superintendent – but rarely involves a great teacher affecting the school beyond their classroom.
Teacher leadership should move to the next level to include the question: how can a teacher effect change in their district?
I believe that institutional change will be driven by teachers who are committed to changing the culture of their districts.
It is no longer tenable for enlightened educators to act as silos of innovation. Teachers should target educational leaders, curriculum directors, superintendents, and boards to help educate them on the importance of 21st century skills and the role of technology in teaching these skills.
The ed tech blogosphere would benefit from more discussions about implementing change management programs and less talk about the latest gadgets or web sites.
An ideal school culture would award risk-taking and innovation in instruction. An investment in technology is often a tough, risky decision that requires genuine leadership and buy-in.
But leadership does not need to happen solely at the principal, or administration level. Leadership can function at the teacher level as well.
Educators are great leaders and experts in consensus building, aligning students around a vision, gaining political capital, managing conflict, and driving change. But, educators are typically not trained in applying these skills to effecting enterprise-level change. In essence, teachers should apply their classroom leadership skills to their entire districts.
The education sector can borrow from change management, turnaround management, and leadership classes from traditional business schools to learn how to apply these skills to district-level change.
Genuine leadership at the teacher level is the key ingredient to institute systemic, sustainable change in school districts.
How effective are education technology conferences?
July 14, 2008
With NECC 2008 winding down, I thought it would be appropriate to post my opinions on education technology conferences.
Last year, I felt that Florida Education Technology Conference (FETC) was significantly better than NECC. But most education technology conferences are afflicted with the same problem: they are targeting the wrong people with the wrong ideas.
While I was not able to attend NECC this year, I suspect that I would have been as disappointed as Will Richardson:
But for me, at least, at the end of the day, I’m still left wondering, “what’s really changed?” And, where will we be a year from now?
NECC is the echo chamber writ large and in living color; more than any other conference, it’s where we feel “big.” But the reality of it is, as Dean suggests, the powerful learning that most of us experience in these online communities is still little more than a blip on the radar screen. (I wonder what percentage of the 8 million+ educators in this country are aware of these shifts on a basic level.)…
And I think it’s time we get serious about all of that. No doubt, the vendor floor in Washington will be filled with “Web 2.0 in a Box” and “Safe Social Networking” and control, control, control. And I’m going to guess that, like this year, “Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts” will be “Hot Topics” as well as a few other new tools. And we’ll be talking once again about new standards and 21st Century Literacies and all of that. But while we as a community have no control over some of that, is that what we aspire to? Is that what we want the emphasis on NECC 09 to be, once again? Or do we want it to be more?
I hope it’s more. More about learning and figuring out what it means to be connected. More about what we can do to begin systemic change. More tangible, non-toolsy, results oriented thinking. More models that work, models that provide realistic options for educators to wrap their brains around.
These are an incredibly insightful comments.
The echo chamber of education technologists reinforcing each other’s beliefs is not the most effective way to drive change in the education sector.
NECC and other big-name education conference are an extremely expensive venue to share ideas about collaborative tools, Web 2.0, and professional learning communities. Remember, we are living in the age of free.
The educators at NECC represent above-average wealth districts who can afford to send people to education technology conferences to learn about the latest technology. Is this what our emerging leaders in education technology should be investing their money in?
I believe that potential attendees should be investing their time and money into educating neighboring districts about online technologies and collaborative communities.
Social, participatory, online communities require user adoption. As Dean Shareski points out, only a small sliver of the educational community is participating in online communities. There will be greater impact, a more vibrant social community, and less expenses by technology leaders investing in educating their neighboring districts as opposed to attending fancy conferences.
We need a new approach to encouraging systematic change in the education sector and conferences are not the answer.
Update: University of Akron Professor, and OETNer, Jeremy Brueck, has posted his reflections on NECC 2008.
How does a school choose a technology vendor that they have never worked with?
July 1, 2008
@mom2cjm on Twitter asks:
Trying to choose a vendor to provide my wireless network…any help out there?
I solicited advice from my team to help understand how schools should choose a technology vendor. I got this thoughtful 3-point evaluation criteria from my manager of network services:
1. Length of time the company has been in business and producing the product you are interested in. The longer the production time, the more mature and stable the product generally is. You never want to buy a first year car and this same philosophy holds true with technology as well.
2. Ongoing costs/Warranty - Compare the warranty of each unit (how long is the initial warranty), and what are the support hours? Do they have a toll free number to call? Some smaller companies may have email only support. What are the maintenance costs for the unit for a year (ie software upgrades, etc)?
3. Ask for at least 2 references (aside from the case studies on their website) and call and talk to them. How long they have had the wireless, how much their support costs were, how expensive was the install, etc)?