Previously I blogged about professional development and why we need it in classrooms and business settings and I provided some examples with smartphones and iPads being integrated into the educational setting depending on the subject matter. Chapter 6 of the new tools text is a discussion on how to implement the professional development. Wesley Fryer (2006) asserts that in order for the development to be successful, administrators need to have a vision as to how it’s going to occur. He also believes that discussion about such issues such as technology integration should not only occur along administrators, but between administrators and teachers as well. While I am not a teacher, I can see why this would be difficult. While we need to realize that students today are a part of a digital generation, that even when I was in high school, I did not have this much experience with technology. The only real social networking tool that we had was MySpace, Podcasting was virtually unheard of. So in that since, I can see why teachers and administrators would be overwhelmed with having so much technology thrown at them in such a short period. There is also the possibility (and this most likely will occur) that students will not utilize the technology in the ways that they are supposed to. That is while the school system may have a vision to enhance the students learning experience; students may have other ideas that get them carried away.
I found the passage on leadership in the 21st century to be relevant to my experience in my education career thus far. I’ve stated that in my past blogs that in grade school our computer usage was limited to the computer labs and the library. The only other exception would be computer literacy or typing classes. According to Levin & Arafeh:
School administrators-and not teachers- set the tone for Internet use at school. The differences among the schools attended by students [surveyed] were striking. Policy choices by those who run school systems and other factors have resulted in different schools having different levels of access to the Internet, different requirements for student technology literacy skills, and different restrictions on student Internet access. (2002)
While this applied to my educational experience, (i.e. any website that was not set by an administrator was pretty much blocked w/ no questions asked), I’m sure that this is the norm in many schools today. Despite the trend to incorporate these newer forms of technology (such as electronic gadgets, another thing that was not even allowed on school premises when I was in grade school) in the class today, there are still several educational institutions that have a professional development mindset. Web 2.0 tools like twitter, and Skype had not been around at the time, the closest that we had to Skype or ooVoo was Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. While they had web cam ability, the quality was not very good, images were rather foggy. Google docs had not been used; we were still using floppy disk! (I did not get introduced to the jump drive until my sophomore year of college). So, again, I relate to this passage the most because, I am kind of in the midst of this transformation from web 1.0 to web 2.0 and I’m still learning as time goes by.
NETS*A (National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators)
I. Leadership and Vision – Educational leaders inspire a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology and foster an environment and culture conducive to the realization of that vision. Educational leaders:
A. Facilitate the shared development by all stakeholders of a vision for technology use and widely communicate that vision.
B. Maintain an inclusive and cohesive process to develop, implement, and monitor a dynamic, long-range, and systemic technology plan to achieve the vision.
C. Foster and nurture a culture of responsible risk taking and advocate policies promoting continuous innovation with technology.
D. Use date in making leadership decisions
E. Advocate for research-based effective practices in use of technology.
F. Advocate, on the state and national levels, for policies, programs, and funding opportunities that support implementation for the district technology plan.
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