Digital leadership doesn't actually start with technology, but instead with collaborative leadership. It's about including all stakeholders in the formulation and implementation of a technology plan. It's about everyone being part of the process instead of just being told what to do.
To develop a technology integration plan, (Sheninger, 2014) says that digital leadership is about a change in mindset that causes a professional behavior change. He also discusses how collaboration, modeling, supporting teachers, encouraging risk-taking, and providing relevant professional development opportunities is critical to success of a technology integration plan.
Research performed by (Williams, Atkinson, Cate, & O'Hair, 2008) at the K20 Center for Educational and Community Renewal at the University of Oklahoma focused on developing professional development protocols that focused on innovations in teaching and learning. They received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and were ranked third in the nation for the change they saw in student learning during the course of their study! They focused on building leadership and support systems before pushing technology to the forefront.
Many technology integration plans start with a survey of stakeholders. Who would those stakeholders be? For middle school level of students and above, I would want to survey teachers, administrators, students, and possibly parents. For elementary level, I'd definitely want to include parents since younger students may not fully understand all of the questions or needs.
Many communities are also looking to help residents by developing WiFi networks that are free and open to the public outside of places like libraries and other public buildings. In Denton, the city has made WiFi available to anyone within a radius of approximately 2 city blocks of the court house. Having this resource available would certainly help those that may not be able to afford access at a household level. A collaboration between public schools and and other community resources makes sense. Having hot spots like that in high student-population areas would be amazing for our students!
Collaborating with providers of services like free WiFi to collect data about peak usage times, device type, location, what type of content they're accessing, and any demographic data available would help guide direction for when to boost available bandwidth or where to make services available. Using data about consumers that return to the same locations could also help determine effectiveness of particular levels of service made available to them.
(Gura, 2018) described many models and plans for technology integration: Microsoft's Education Transformation Framework, Intel's Education Transformation Technology Adoption Blueprint, SAMR Model, and TPACK Framework. The SAMR model is one that I've used to evaluate lessons I've modified from use prior to technology integration. I think the SAMR model and TPACK Framework both provide appropriate guidance on developing and assessing lessons. Microsoft's Framework and Intel's Blueprint are similar, but Microsoft's Framework tools online push selling Microsoft products. Intel's Blueprint seems to have great tools available to help select devices while building an integration plan that can be used across many brands of devices. (Sheninger, 2014) discusses the Breaking Ranks Framework and the Six Stages of Systematic School Improvement.
I think a the online tools in Intel's Blueprint and the Breaking Ranks Framework would fit well in guiding needs on my campus. Teachers may be more comfortable with a simplified model like SAMR or TPACK to use for lesson evaluation. As they get more comfortable with technology integration, they may be more open to using more complex tools like Intel's Blueprint or Breaking Ranks Framework, which can be overwhelming at first glance.
Citations
**1/27 Update: Here's a link to a summary of my survey and data associated with it.
https://bit.ly/2RlMplu
No comments:
Post a Comment