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.
There is a technology war coming. Actually it is already here but most of us haven’t yet notice. It is a war not about technology but because of technology, a war over how we as a culture embrace technology. It is a war that threatens venerable institutions and, to a certain extent, threatens what many people think of as their very way of life.
we’ve reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.
It is about honesty. It is about being truthful to our students about the flaws of our educational system. It is essential that we open a dialogue with our children to help them design their educational processes. Together we can do more than simply patch the existing system, and we need to do it soon.
It is about building capacity! That is where leadership on all levels is needed! It needs to happen across districts, in schools, and even 'one teacher at a time'!
Some would argue that the tension and irritation between "why" and "how" is by design. That these shifts are creating a permissive framework in education where there are no clear answers (Turner, 2004). And that in a changing educational environment the needed changes in education should be negotiated from a why approach rather than a how approach.
It is no longer about information management and prescriptive outcomes, but rather about building capacity- in ourselves, our faculty, our staff and in our students and then being able to contextualize the collective wisdom we gain through those relationships to making the world a better place.
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