As early as the 1980's educators realized there is value in providing instructional experience to improve computer literacy, record-keeping, and improving student performance. So much so that school districts have spent billions of dollars a year in technology and it technology is still not integrated into most curriculum's. I find it devastating to the educational of our students that bureaucracy prevents educators from using technology to its full potential. The author of "Educational Leadership and Planning for Technology" Anthony Picciano's revelation reveals that schools still consider themselves in the developmental stages but my question is when does the development stage end. Students, teacher, parents, and administrators demand more in regards to education and technology and the developmental stage is an now an excuse.
Our early theorist Dewey, Piaget, Bloom, Gagne, and Vygotsky may not have agreed on the rate, manner or intellectual abilities of children but evidence has proven that students learn from doing, experiments, and by problem solving, Instructional technology is the gateway to providing hands on instruction. We as educators must get away from the "one teaching style fits the needs of all children" approach. The traditional teaching practice of lecturing, memorizing, and teacher directed learning is so old school. We should not sell student short by settling for traditional teaching methods because its what's familiar or easy we should use as many new resources as possible to ensure understanding by as many as possible.
The text points out learning is three fold instruction, assessment and curriculum. The question is how do we move all three components into a technology based arena and replace many of the traditional practices to technology based resources. We realize many things are out of our control as educators but there are a lot of things within our control like: being innovative, un-afraid of change, yet flexible by using various teaching strategies while engaging students with challenging multi-media components. Another thing we can do as teachers is acknowledge the benefits of collaboration and use technology to manage student teacher interactions, monitor performance, and assess achievement.
As a future leader in technology it is important to be actively engaged because if you are not apart of the team then why would anyone else. It is just as important to listen, be a reflective thinker and make analytical inquiries but, in doing so it is critical to use appropriate vocabulary, tone, sand tyle to be an effective leader regardless if it is in the classroom, boardroom, or pulpit.
Anthony G.P. (2011). Educational leadership and planning for technology (5th. ed) Hunter College, NY:
Allyn & Bacon.
Hall, D. (2008). The Technology Director's Guide to Leadership. ISTE.
Excellent stuff. It's always important to realize the differences between theories of education are less important than the ability to learn from them all as we form our own approach to education.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the responsibility of the educator is to make whatever adjustments they can to take advantage of the various technological options available. I think it's going to get very interesting as states and districts try to discern how to best write standards in the future with the growing variety of educational tools and the realization that not all students learn the same way.
Joe Greene
I've seen when someone brings in a new fresh idea and as long as the person doing it keeps pushing the info and techonlogy, eventually it'll get picked up and encorporated into the rest of the work plan. This goes back to "buy in". If supervision does not "buy in" to the new techonlogy whether it is mandated or not, it will most likely only be half-heartedly adopted into the classroom. Thinking outside the classroom, as I personally don't plan on being just a classroom teacher, technology still has a huge role in district offices and administrative settings. We should not forget that good ideas and fresh thinking can also come from those areas.
ReplyDelete@ Matt right on buy in if the leader is not leading through example then why should others follow, thanks for responding.
ReplyDelete@ Joe I cant wait to for states to mandate technology in construction but more importantly offer trainings to instructors for integrating technology in instruction. Thanks for stopping by!