Leadership for a Successful Technology Initiative

Personal Author:
Lile, Sarah
Journal Name:
Principal Leadership (Middle School Ed.)
Source:
Principal Leadership (Middle School Ed.) v. 9 no. 3 (November 2008)

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This paper is concerned about the successful of the technology initiative and the role of the effective leadership in sustaining a technology program. Schools and districts must ensure all parties involved take an active role in implementing and sustaining a technology program in order to develop a technology initiative, State leaders ,district leaders must collaborate to help schools with technology initiatives; and also teachers well trained in using technology which is considered an important aspect of the leadership and required team work to exchange experience with different software, programs, and projects to determine what improves instruction in their classrooms; and students must be empowered to be leaders in a technology initiative using a balanced approach.


The writer indicated four levels of leadership for a Successful Technology in schools.

· High-Profile Leadership

Technology dictions are made in state level with guidance from school leaders, state leaders-- including the governor, the chief state school officer, legislators, educators, business leaders, and influential citizens--must collaborate to help schools with technology initiatives

· County or District Leadership
County leadership teams need to use a technology integration progression chart as a guide to create school improvement. Leadership for a technology program is also a part of the professional development.

· School Leadership

Technology can also be a part of teacher leadership when teachers work together in technology study groups that experiment with different software, programs, and projects to determine what improves instruction in their classrooms.

· Student Leadership

Students sometimes bring new technologies to the attention of their teachers and administrators, helping amplify the use of technology in the classroom. A student-staffed help desk can also keep school staff members from getting bogged down with minor technical issues, making students an integral part of the technology program.

I think with the collaboration between the four levels will result on achieving excellent technology program, the communication between these levels, and taking on consideration the role of teachers ,as main medium ,who carry out the responsibilities .

Change the Culture!
Personal Author:
Fletcher, Geoffrey H.
Journal Name:
T.H.E. Journal
Source:
T.H.E. Journal v. 33 no. 11 (June 2006) p.

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This paper indicates that the Software and Information Industry Association’s (www.siia.com) recent Ed Tech Industry summit declared that helping educators and improving education will associate changing the culture of schools. This contributions indicate that such a transformation would involve changing No Child Left Behind when it comes up for reauthorization in the near future; changing the way states administer education; changing the way states and districts adopt textbooks/content; changing colleges of education; and providing extensive professional development to all teachers and, in particular, to school leaders.
No one actually defined the culture change, but everyone seemed to be talking about different concept of change, these changes include the way students’ way of looking for information and way they are solving problems, in addition, to never identifying what change, no one at the summit explained how to engender it. There were references to professional development, but the more I listened, the more I discerned a consensus: To transform the culture in our schools, we need to do all of the following: Change No Child Left Behind when it comes up for reauthorization in the next couple of
The questions that addressed in the summit is about: What does "change the culture" mean?
Does it means the Change of states administer education, or the way states and districts adopt textbooks/content, or Change colleges of education
In my opinion the change included all aspects of traditional classroom, e.g.the teacher center class to student center where the teacher is not the only source of information, also student exchange knowledge and information from each other,
Moreover the power of research, culture and geography

We've Got the Technology

Personal Author:
Aronson, Marc
Journal Name:
School Library Journal
Source:
School Library Journal v. 54 no. 12 (December 2008)
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"We are 20th-century teachers using 19thcentury methods to reach 21st-century students."
The writer, suggests that the educational system is more likely to see the old and the new overlapping and blending than a total transformation, for the teachers who had enough experience working with all kind of technology e.g. video games, computers and many new education models, come and go, need to stop and questions whether this paradigm shift is realistic, and whether educators can bridge the huge gap.
The writer brought some real experiences form his friends teacher at a recent educational technology conference she addressed almost everybody talking about the importance of the abundance of the traditional scarcity model, where students are shown how to find information, and embrace an excess model -- one in which young people are trained to select from among many competing resources and craft their own narratives. But does this radical transformation reflect the reality of today's schools? Most of the old educator and the new are likely to overlap and blend, not suddenly displace each other. Doesn't that make sense? Doesn't that sound more realistic than a vision of a completely transformed educational system?
For the literate classes liked having a difficult, traditional, native-born written language. They liked that more than they craved ease, modernity, or convenience in dealing with foreigners. And that bring them back to schools, technology, students, and change. The fact that technology makes new kinds of educational opportunities possible doesn't imply that teachers, administrators, school boards, and college admittance personnel -- not to mention students and parents -- want, or even need, those new methods.

Plato's iPod: Can Hand-Held Electronics Be Valuable Tools of Learning?

Other Titles:
Part of a special issue entitled Teaching in a 2.0 world
Personal Author:
Rosenberg, Day
Journal Name:
Independent School
Source:
Independent School v. 68 no. 2 (Winter 2009)

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There is big concern about the effects of new communication tools ever since Plato worried that the alphabet would cause us to lose our memorization skills and cut down on our quality time together, says Howard Rheingold, and the debate whether they should use the new technology. He agreed that they are going to use it even the adults because it fulfils their needs of communication, and he added "We've had writing. We've had the alphabet. We've had the printing press. These are technologies for extending the way we think and communicate. That's what humans do: We come up with new ways to communicate and new ways to build our own civilizations
Also the text addresses the Worries about micro-technology being a distraction or in schools. The question is what are we to make of these new devices--these palm-sized computers and cell phones that reek of cutting-edge technology Shouldn't we worry that they offer more distraction than benefit? Aren't they undermining our efforts at teaching, this advanced technology allows students photograph tests and send them to friends on their buddy lists?
Between Samsung and the Apple store, there are over 150 educational applications available for purchase and download, and there are hundreds more free on the Internet some of my favorite cell-phone educational applications:
Ten years ago, we were discussing whether or not we should embrace the Internet as an academic tool, but the real problem is that it's hard to be open to the idea of embracing such technology when most of what we hear is the negative. The amazing projects, documentaries, and music and language lessons don't get quite the same quiver out of a sensation-driven media. Yet, these positives are significant and becoming clearer to educators every day. We are now weaving the Internet into our curriculum with greater sophistication and greater results.

Teaching Outside the Box

Personal Author:
Ciske, Stuart J.
Journal Name:
T.H.E. Journal
Source:
T.H.E. Journal v. 34 no. 7 (July 2007) p. 22, 24

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The focus on the use of the technology should be on how the tools could be used to stimulate learning, more than the tools itself, the officials in Wisconsin realized that the focus was too much on technology (the box) away from seeing technology as an ingredient in student performance. We needed to shift our attention from the tools themselves and concentrate on how technology and information services could be used to support learning.
This shift adopted by Wisconsin and of Public Instruction and its partners, first was strongly encourage districts to create a technology plan to meet requirement for No Child Left Behind, The creation of a unified plan made sense, as it facilitated cooperation between programs,
"Our district's library media and technology plan provides us the clear goals and direction we need to focus our limited resources on initiatives impacting our students the Most," says Santana Lau,
Many district staff comments that the information they've gather from data analysis has allowed them to focus their professional development on student performance, and on how media and technology services and programs can support achievement. This link is vital to sustaining systemic change and reform.

What to Expect with Personal Technology

Personal Author:
Goldsborough, Reid
Journal Name:
Tech Directions
Source:
Tech Directions v. 68 no. 8 (March 2009) p. 13-14


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"If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me." Shakespeare's words are just as wise today, but this hasn't stopped people from trying to divine the future.
This paper is addressing some predictions about the future of the personal technology, including the use of email and how it is going to decline, what will come in the future will be very interesting to think about it with your students also The advertising industry is highly expected to change among those sectors of society.
The report "Technology Trends for 2009." includes some insightful predictions, including: e-mail and called it overload a "serious productivity drain," the report indicates, will be social networking for professionals, which involve communications-centered web sites, and micro blogging, which involve brief text updates.

Computing will increasingly become increasingly access software online. Technology will decrease in cost as they increase in functionality and ease of use. Which includes services for personal as well as school and business use, such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, web site creation, and private wikis? The latter are collections of web pages designed to let anyone permitted to access them contribute or modify content, creating collaborative knowledge bases. The use of mobile devices will continue to increase. Cloud computing offloads processing and storage requirements to web-based servers, making it possible to do more with less powerful devices. The increasing availability of wireless broadband connections from the big companies

Here & now in the school of the future:

Part of a special issue entitled Teaching in a 2.0 world Personal Author: Howland, Jonathan; Levin, Howard Journal Name: Independent School Source: Independent School v. 68 no. 2 (Winter 2009) p. 88-91 http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.libproxy.chapman.edu:2048/hww/results/getResults.jhtml?_DARGS=/hww/results/results_common.jhtml.21Digital tools in school should focus on enhancing and improving student learning. However, educators should be considering the need of the students. Moreover, digital tools allow teachers to access each other's work to improve teaching and learning practices. The rationale for using digital tools in school is to enhance and improve student learning.The school of the future is better than the school of the past not because of the use of technology, but because it supports, and sustains student learning in traditional (as well as new) disciplines in more intelligent, and effective ways. In this way, it builds upon, expresses, and improves so much of what has been. The digital school has a revolutionary feature; The Wireless access, the small group of classmates and the demonstrations, from anywhere. As a result, the once rigid distinction between activities appropriate to class (watch, share, talk, construct) and those called homework (read and write, practice and prepare) has become purposefully blurred. The digital classroom, as such, represents a challenge and an invitation to teachers that begins, as it always has, with generating an engagingThe mistake always made, is to focus on the machine, set up computer labs or purchase laptop carts, and then to ask teachers to figure out how to integrate the technology into a curriculum in this case we have embraced a misleading assumption, that students need to use technology. What do students need in order to learn math, language, science, history, and art? What are the teaching practices we can develop to improve learning in these ears, and what are the digital tools we can use, to enhance the learning in each of these and other areas?