ISLLC Standard II: A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth. The administrator facilitates processes and engages in activities ensuring that technologies are used in teaching and learning.
Name/Situation: �Welcome to the 21st Century�
Problem: Assessing and Encouraging the Implementation of technology as an instructional tool for both teachers and students.
Key Issues/Questions:
1. Why is technology an important instructional tool?
2. Who should use technology as an instructional tool?
Introduction:
During the 07-08 school year a new school superintendent, Dr. Maurey, was hired for the Alcovy School District. Dr. Maurey challenged the building level administrators to meet five instructional/organizational goals, which he felt would positively impact student learning. One of the goals proposed by Dr. Maurey was to increase the use of technology as both a teaching and learning strategy.
Dr. Maurey asked each building level administrator to develop a method of evaluating the current level of technology implementation within their school buildings and develop a plan for increasing implementation based on the data they collected.
Analysis & Solution:
Mrs. Diglim is principal at Angelica Elementary in the Alcovy School District. Mrs. Diglim routinely conducts informal classroom observations. During these observations she made a conscious effort to make note of the variety of ways technology was being implemented in the classroom. The following technology resources were observed: use of the student information system to track attendance, truancy and student check-outs from the media center; use of technology programs to create classroom newsletters, and the use of technology to complete individual reading inventories.
Mrs. Diglim prepared a summary of her informal observations regarding technology implementation to be presented at a school-wide faculty meeting. In addition, Mrs. Diglim met with county level technology specialist, as well as with her building level computer lab instructor, to brainstorm a list of available technology resources. Mrs. Diglim asked the computer lab instructor to prepare a power point presentation which would be scheduled for presentation at the same faculty meeting where the informal observation results would be discussed.
The presentation was to include a list of technology resources available for use in the classroom, as well as a list of examples detailing how the technology resources could be utilized by both teachers and students. In addition, during the faculty meeting the principal placed teachers in collaborative pairs and asked them to brainstorm ways in which they felt the use of technology could be increased in their classrooms.
Mrs. Diglim challenged each teacher to identify three technology resources which they felt they could implement within their classrooms over the next grading period. She also informed the staff that at the end of the next grading period she would be including technology resource use as checklist for items she would look for during her informal observations.
At the end of the grading period, Ms. Diglim again conducted informal observations with the focus on the implementation of technology resources. She found the following examples of implementation: students using the internet to research topics for class presentations, a fifth grade teacher using power point to introduce a science lesson on volcanoes, fourth grade students working in collaborative groups to write articles for the classroom newsletter which would later be published on the class website, wireless computer labs being used in second grade as instructional learning centers and staff development classes offered by the school computer lab instructor which focused on using technology in the classroom.
Response to Questions:
Advances in today's society dictate that both teachers and students be familiar with technological advances which can positively impact student learning. Technology allows all educators to present materials in a variety of ways and to open new avenues of information for students.
Discussion:
The situation described above offers an interesting view on how the challenge from the superintendent should be carried out. The principal takes the time to consider her options for how to best evaluate the use of technology. She then allows for informal observations which resulted in open collaborative discussions about the implementation of technology as an instructional tool. The principal also tapped into the personnel resources available to her in order to provide the most accurate and useful information for classroom teachers. By using trained personnel, the principal did not have to rely on her own skills but instead was able to draw from a variety of resources. This response could be considered an accomplished response in that it provided detailed descriptions of how best to meet the goals established by the superintendent and principal.
Guidelines:
1. Criteria and/or methods used to evaluate the degree to which technology is implemented should be communicated to all staff members.
2. The use of technology as an instructional strategy should be research-based.
3. Personnel who have been trained in the areas of implementation can be a valuable resource.