(Alternate Title: “Can We Fix It, Yes We Can!”)

          —Barack Obama

Session Description

-that some have almost no hope of retooling, changing themselves in time. Yet, some parts of the world—like our classrooms and the teachers in them—are suffering even more as a result of the swift change. Against this backdrop of suffering and chaotic change, leadership that focuses on how and what needs to be done is critical.

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For Discussion

What habits do we want to cultivate so that we can ACT our way into being who we want to be? A research study I re-read recently reminded of those points for administrators.

If you’re a superintendent or principal, I encourage you to take these items to heart. Mitchaell Shuldman shares his research in Superintendent Conceptions of Institutional Conditions that Impact Teacher Technology Integration (Summer, 2004) in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education. I’ve pulled the relevant sentences from the study and quote them below as “new habits” we need to cultivate in schools—habits that must be cultivated at the top of the administrator hierarchy FIRST.

1. Active participation on the district’s technology committee, as chair person
2. Engagement in active discussions with tech personnel to smooth out and clarify lines of responsibility, authority, and overlapping interests
3. The creation of site-based technology committees to ensure active engagement by principals
4. Redefinition of technology teacher positions and the creation of technology curriculum coordinator positions
5. Use of the persuasive power of the superintendency to help a tech coordinator evolve middle school reading specialists into full-time technology integrators and to infuse the district tech ed faculty with tech skills
6. Assist in establihment of free evening technology classes for adults
7. Facilitate a project that has middle school students teaching email tech to senior citizens
8. Actively engage other locally elected civic boards into the district tech discussion to build broader community support
9. Expect principals to take the lead in ensuring that all teachers in their building work towards adopting technology.
10. Get principals to make sure that teachers included technology goals in their individual professional development plans.
11. Establish campus instructional technologists.
12. The best hope for tech lies in its use as an asynchronous tool for communication that allows teachers to engage and collaborate with one another within a building and across the district. Encouraging online discussion amongst teachers in study groups is core feature of professional development strategy.

It’s #12 that is most exciting. In reading another research study, it seems that computers are not the catalyst for change. The catalyst is REFLECTION on instructional practice. So, if you want to encourage tech-enhanced change, follow these steps:

1. Practice a hands-on approach, putting into practice the suggestions Shuldman makes above.
2. Foster reflection among teachers, encouraging them to use technology in simple ways such as blogging their reflections on teaching and learning.
3. Model the constructivist instructional use of computers where students use technology as a tool for communication, collaboration, creation of information, as well as accessing, analyzing and organizing information.
4. Make your learning—successes and challenges—transparent by keeping a blog yourself, and encourage others to do so as well by facilitating open-ended conversations such as the ones being had at EduCon 2.0.

Can we fix it? Yes we can!