leadership development for critique/a call for technolo… · educational consultants at...

www.DistrictAdministration.com November/December 2010 41

A Call for Technology Leadership

New recommendations urge every superintendent to have a technology strategy—or risk falling behind.

By Ron SchachteR

Leadership deveLopment

the ReSponSiBilitieS oF the modern school superinten-dent may already seem bound-less, from making the most of

shrinking budgets, to working 21st-century skills into the K12 curriculum, to meeting the escalating standards of nclB testing. But thanks to the initiatives of two national organizations dedicated to improving the use of educational technology in schools, the job description just got longer.

last July, the Washington, D.c.-based consortium for School networking (coSn) released an updated version of

“empowering the 21st century Super-intendent,” a blueprint for seizing the technological initiative in areas ranging from better integrating technology into classroom instruction, to creating profes-sional learning communities for teachers, to inventing more complex assessments of student work. While these themes are already high on the agenda of many dis-

tricts, coSn’s document makes the case that nowadays the effective use of educa-tional technologies is crucial and provides action steps for superintendents to take.

in april, the international Society of technology in education (iSte) launched iSte learning, an online resource designed to help leaders implement new technolo-gies in the classroom (see sidebar).

Pamela Moran, the superintendent of Albemarle County (Va.) Schools, shows elementary students how to use an iPad in lessons. From Skyping with educational consultants at universities, to e-mailing and tweeting teachers, to publishing her own blog, Moran keeps technology front and center.

Photo by Brian Gunnell

Tech Leadrshp.indd 41 11/16/10 11:34:28 AM

42 November/December 2010 District Administration

CoSN’s Master PlanThe 21-page CoSN document, first released in 2008, describes five imperatives for superintendents: (1) modeling the use of new technologies in communicating to students, teachers and the general public; (2) ensuring that technology becomes inte-gral to teaching 21st-century skills from critical thinking and problem solving to collaboration and information literacy in the classroom; (3) boosting Web 2.0 appli-cations and tools as key components of student learning; (4) offering professional development in these technologies and deploying the online tools that help teach-ers create learning communities among themselves; and (5) requiring better bal-anced assessments of student work—including project-based learning enhanced by technology tools—in an age driven by NCLB-oriented testing and better use of data from the assessments to help students improve their performance.

The revised edition also includes a self-assessment for superintendents to evaluate how far their districts have come along the technological curve. CoSN’s CEO Keith Krueger explains that his organization’s research shows that many district lead-ers are behind that curve, and the new document opens with a letter: “Of all the challenges you face as a superintendent, technology leadership may be the one that leaves you feeling the most unprepared,

uncertain, and vulnerable. You are not alone,” Krueger says. “All too often, super-intendents and the folks they reported to didn’t care about or know enough about educational technology.”

So he and his staff recruited a panel of superintendents from around the country to identify solutions, the first of which is to lead by example in using technology to communicate and conduct business. “The no-brainer of the five is that superinten-dents need to have the skills themselves,” says Chip Kimball, the superintendent of the Lake Washington (Wash.) School Dis-trict. Kimball served on CoSN’s advisory panel and helped analyze its findings.

“It’s now become apparent to everyone that if schools aren’t using technology to improve student learning, they will fall behind,” agrees Jayne James, ISTE’s senior director of education leadership. Getting the Word OutKimball has become one of CoSN’s pri-mary messengers in spreading the word that superintendents need to promote technology throughout their districts, which he concedes may be easier said than done. In recent months, he’s presented his thoughts at national administrators’ conferences. “It’s the right agenda to be talking about,” Kimball says. He believes the challenge today is how to make these items actionable, especially since “superin-

tendents today are hounded by everyone thinking that their agendas should be the district’s top agenda.”

Douglas Reeves, who founded the Leadership and Learning Center and has consulted with superintendents on leader-ship issues for almost two decades, agrees that today’s superintendent is stretched in too many directions. He cautions that the


Suzanne Freeman, Trussville (Ala.) City Schools superintendent and early adopter of CoSN’s step-by-step approach, on right, attended the district’s annual TETC, a technology professional development event, and took classes alongside other teachers.

“You can no longer take on a professional devel-

opment agenda without a technology component.”

—Chip Kimball, superintendent, the Lake Washington (Wash.) School District

Tech Leadrshp.indd 42 11/18/10 1:36:13 PM


large-scale changes CoSN is advocating are most likely to happen for district lead-ers who are not engaged in dozens of other initiatives. “Everybody wants the super-intendent to be in the middle of every-thing,” Reeves explains. “� e real acid test is whether you can execute the ‘not-to-do list,’” adding that superintendents need to resist establishing too many priorities.

Each of the fi ve areas featured in “Empowering the 21st Century Superin-tendent” includes a set of resources and a series of action steps for superintendents and district leadership teams. For instance, in the 21st-century skills section, leaders are urged to improve their own such skills, cre-ate a vision for integrating them into K12 instruction, audit the district’s strategic plan to see which might be missing and adjust professional development accordingly.

“I think it’s a way to organize,” says Suzanne Freeman, Trussville (Ala.) City Schools superintendent and early adopter of CoSN’s step-by-step approach. “As a superintendent, you can be bombarded” with many publications and books. She

adds that the steps recommended by CoSN “simplify things without oversimplifying.”

Krueger notes that there’s something in the overall plan for every superintendent. “Clearly you’re going to have to play more of a role because you may not have a chief technology offi cer,” he says. “But there’s an upside. Once a leader in a smaller district knows where he or she wants to go, change can happen more quickly than in a mid- or large-size district.”

Krueger adds that, in the absence of in-house technical support, district leaders can get help from regional educational ser-vices agencies, state education networks, and CoSN’s own Small School District Leadership Initiative.

Leading by ExampleSome of CoSN’s panel participants, includ-ing Freeman, already serve as role models. Freeman, who uses a blog to communicate with students and parents, points out that her own active use of technology in the 4,200-student district has helped create a norm for others to follow. When it came to

creating interview questions for recruiting new teachers and redesigning the format of parent meetings, Freeman had teachers and administrators collaborate online. For a recent presentation to parents on district initiatives, Freeman used Elluminate Web conferencing software, in which parents asked questions via instant messaging.

“I learned these new skills by par-ticipating in the professional learning opportunities off ered by our school sys-tem. I’m learning these tools alongside of teachers,” Freeman says, noting that she does not hesitate to seek out the district’s technology integration specialist for addi-tional training.

Pamela Moran, the superintendent of Albemarle County (Va.) Schools, wasn’t on the CoSN committee, but is considered one of the top-10 tech-savvy school superinten-dents in the country. From Skyping with educational consultants at distant universi-ties, to e-mailing and tweeting teachers, to publishing her own blog, Moran says she has deliberately kept technology front and center. “A number of our schools have

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44 November/December 2010 District Administration

Twitter and Facebook accounts,” Moran points out. “And our principals are starting to blog.”

High-Tech Students and TeachersMoran is also expanding technology across the curriculum, especially in the form of Web 2.0 innovations, such as the free


ISTE LearningLAst JuNe At its ANNuAL coNfereNce, the iNterNAtioNAL society of techNoLogy in education launched iste Learning (www.istelearning.org), its own initiative to increase the impact of educational technology in school districts and to encourage superintendents to play a prominent part in the process. the new Web site doubles as an online community and professional development center for teachers and administrators alike.

“it’s now become apparent to everyone that if schools aren’t using technology to improve student learning, they will fall behind,” says Jayne James, iste’s senior director of education leadership.

iste Learning is set up as a virtual city, in which educators can visit a “commons”—a searchable collection of Webinars, podcasts, and articles—as well as a “café” for social networking. A “Learning Labs” space provides help in incorporating into classroom instruc-tion such tools as wikis, blogs, rss feeds, games, and podcasts.

iste u will join the site in January as a source of short courses on effectively using edu-cational technology. While much of the content in iste Learning is available at no charge, some will require a subscription.

A “change Leadership corner” for administrators will focus on podcasts, blogs, and success stories. “research tells us that overall systematic change is not going to happen unless the district leader is on board and has a vision,” notes James, who adds that iste Learning follows the organization’s decade-old Nets standards for integrating technology into education.

the version of those standards for administrators, released in 2009, largely parallels the areas highlighted in cosN’s empowering the 21st century superintendent.

communications application Skype and the collaboration tool Edmodo. “I’ve seen kids from two separate elementary schools use Edmodo to comment on each other’s work,” Moran says. Teachers can insert comments, reinforcing the student edit-ing and offering some suggestions of their own, she continues, adding that they can

do multimedia collaboration using Voice-Threads, which allows for voice, video and slide shows. “It’s as important to educate kids as well in negotiating the Web 2.0 skill set as we used to teach them how to negotiate libraries,” Moran says.

And Moran stays personally involved, says Blair Davis, a teacher at the district’s Red Hill Elementary School. “When she finds that you’re using a particular pro-gram, she’ll log on. And we’ll get e-mail from her connecting us to other teachers doing similar things in their classrooms.”

Albemarle County’s professional devel-opment efforts are aimed at introducing a host of Web 2.0 applications to teachers. As a result, teachers use the Web-creation tool Moodle to post assignments, run stu-dent forums, set up questionnaires, and maintain wikis online, and they are even encouraged to use pedagogically appropri-ate examples from YouTube. “The kind of learning we expect 21st-century teachers to achieve is the intersection of content pedagogy and technology,” Moran insists. “We expect them to support kids using iMovies and Skype, as well as [conferenc-ing applications] WebX and Elluminate. Today I have teachers who actually text message each other on what’s going on in their classes at that moment and Twitter homework assignments to students.”

Kimball, of Lake Washington, says that professional development for his district teachers extends to data-driven decision making. “You can no longer take on a pro-fessional development agenda without a technology component,” Kimball argues. “We know that professional learning com-munities are not effective without every-thing—from access to student data to the tools to analyze it.”

The Highest HurdlesThose invested in and practicing CoSN’s suggestions agree stumbling blocks remain, even for the most advanced. District lead-ers still face challenges to breaking down the traditional walls between pedagogy and technology, says Reeves. “What you find is that technology remains on the operations and business side of the organization,” he says. “CTOs (chief technology officers) are

Jayne James, ISTE’s senior director of educational leadership, meets with Brandon Olsze-wski, research associate, and other ISTE professional development and research staff in the Eugene, Ore., operations office to discuss what research says about successful communities of practice and how to implement these ideas in an ongoing evaluation project.



still outside of the instructional loop, and that’s a grave error.”

Freeman says that she and district leaders are fulfi lling most of CoSN’s fi ve objectives, but not the one seeking more comprehensive and balanced assessments. “Our state achievement test measures lower-level skills, not thought processes,” Freeman says. “We’re still trying to fi nd ways to assess what we know we morally should. We know that students need to be competitive in a global environment.”

� at kind of assessment, she continues, would take into account skills such as dis-tinguishing between fact and opinion and learning ethical behavior.

� e message, says Krueger, is not to be scared by NCLB testing requirements and to develop additional instruments to mea-sure 21st-century skills, global learning, and whatever school districts determine is important to learning.

“We have quite a distance to stretch in assessment,” adds Moran, although her district recently installed an instructional

system from Schoolnet that provides rubrics for more open-ended tasks and allows teachers to score them accordingly.

Moran adds that teachers could evalu-ate students on how they break down the demographics to identify potential con-sumers, build a business plan to launch a product, and create spreadsheets to man-age their eff orts. “We want to help teach-ers see an easier route to assessing critical reasoning, creative problem solving and teamwork,” Moran concludes.

Fulfi lling CoSN’s prescription is a tall

order, admits Krueger, but he says it’s encouraging that superintendents are get-ting involved in fi lling it.

“We don’t have all the answers,” Krueger concludes. “� e power of what CoSN has done is to have a conversa-tion about questions such as ‘How can we better engage students?’ and ‘How can we get to the authentic, real-time assessments we want?’”

Ron Schachter is a contributing writer for D A.

An Eastlake High School teacher in the Lake Washington (Wash.) School District uses a whiteboard to teach trigonometry to his students. All classrooms in the district have white-boards, and teachers have received training in this technology.

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