Chapter 6: Leadership and New Tools

            This chapter begins by listing six qualities that individuals must have in order for a school district to achieve success on the 21^st Century.  They are:

·         Individual excellence

·         Organizational skills

·         Courage

·         Results (goal-oriented)

·         Strategic skills

·         Operating skills

I thought the twelve reasons for an Administrator to Blog were very interesting:

·         Sharing news and events:  Large amounts of people can quickly and easily view upcoming events, awards, or schedules.

·         Progress monitoring:  Ability to show the progress of projects that are going on at the school.

·        Status alerts:  People can be notified quickly of last- minute cancellations of events.

·         Marketing:  Allows schools to save paper in order to distribute newsletters or other important information.

·         Public relations:  Administrators are able to post their own versions of stories and allows others to post their feedback.

·         Community building:  It allows the school organization to feel more like a community since everybody has the same access to information.

·         Customer relations:  The public feels as though they are more involved with the school if the principal publishes events and alerts as well.

·         Branding:  This is good for parents who are looking to enter a new school district, and want to find a “good one”.  By having an online blog, it can make parents feel comfortable that information is easily available and update accurately.

·         Creating ‘customer evangelists’:  It allows people who really care about the school to promote and encourage parents of future students to attend.

·         Thought leadership:  The ability for schools to put out on the web new thoughts or ideas about possible changes in the school and allow feedback from the community.

·         Advocacy:  Schools can inform the community about upcoming legislations that may affect the school system so they can become aware and voice their opinion.

·         Replacing the school Web site:  Some schools have used blogs as a key feature to their website because it allows others to communicate and leave feedback.

More schools are turning to free web-based tools, such as Blackboard and Moodle, in order to allow their students to complete assignments and see their grades on line from anywhere and at anytime.  Although the information is free, administrators also need to keep in mind that the upgrades, maintenance, support, and hardware are not free, and can sometimes become expensive.

It is important to look at the cost and benefits of using open-source software for schools.  There are five steps in determining the value of the investment:

·         Estimate costs:  initial and ongoing costs

·         Assess risk:  the probability of success of the project

·         Calculate anticipated savings and revenues: out-of-pocket costs, better efficiencies, user productivity, or future cost avoidance

·         Measure qualitative benefits:  besides money, how could the school and community benefit from the project such as obtaining a goal or mission

·         Evaluate results:  review the anticipated costs, savings, and benefits versus the actual costs, savings, and benefits

“Students and staff have access to Web-based applications and information, and users can control almost everything – the content they read, the ideas they espouse, and the presentations they create.  Today’s users control the tools of production and can reach the world with their ideas.” (pg. 135)

NETS • A Standard

      4.      Support, Management, and Operations – Educational leaders ensure the integration of technology to support productive systems for learning and administration.  I think this standard applies to the chapter because it describes how educational leaders should develop, implement, and monitor policies and guidelines to ensure compatibility of technologies as well as implementing and using integrated technology-based management and operations systems.  It also relates to the chapter because this standard talks about allocating financial and human resources to ensure complete and sustained implementation of the technology plan, integrating strategic plans and other improvement plans and policies to align efforts and leverage resources, and finally to implement procedures to drive continuous improvements of technology systems and to support technology-replacement cycles.

Citations:

Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0, new tools, new schools. Eugene, OR: Intl Society for Technology in educ.