Leadership

We need leaders who see themselves as learners. How can we help school leaders to reconnect with their inner leader? How can we take risks within the parameters of the school environment?

Created to inform, provoke and stimulate ideas and conversations, the Alfred Deakin Lectures are a celebration of big ideas and brilliant minds. Following on from the very successful 2001, 2005 and 2007 series, in 2008 the Deakin Lectures will again focus on innovation and its importance to all aspects of our economy and society.

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As we enter the main stretch of a historic presidential campaign in America, there is much that he can teach the two candidates. I've always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba's Rules (Madiba, his clan name, is what everyone close to him calls him), and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar. They are mostly practical. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.

Effective policies provide the framework for education in a district. This section provides information on policy setting in relationship to technology and change implementation.

Curriculum and assessment are at the center of education. There are many ways that technology and large-scale change impact on these areas. This module provides an overview of emerging models for curriculum and assessment and links to many resources with related information and tools.

This section on Community Involvement provides tools for involving your community in the change and technology planning and implementation processes. Involving the community helps to build support and to ensure that diverse needs and viewpoints are included in future plans for the district.

This section on Facility Planning will assist you when planning and preparing your facilities for technology and change.

Use the resources in this module to find innovative ways of funding technology initiatives in your district as well as linking to the numerous resources available for grants and other funding programs.

Urging the presidential candidates to make K-12 student access to education technology and modern learning environments a top national priority, leading education association have launched a public service announcement campaign titled One Giant Leap for Kids. The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the National Education Association (NEA) and the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) designed the PSA to drive home the message that making investments in technology today is critical to ensuring the ability of U.S. students to compete and succeed in the 21st century global workforce.

During the past decade, 21st Century Skills have been described, debated, and, unfortunately, downplayed when one considers their overall impact on instruction and assessment practices in our public schools. Organizations such as the Partnership of the 21st Century and the former North Central Regional Laboratory have successfully articulated a set of well-defined skill sets targeting needed student outcomes for the 21st Century workplace; yet, a careful scrutiny of district curriculum manuals, pacing guides, and scope & sequence charts reveals little evidence of their existence.  

The LoTi Classroom Teacher represents a series of online courses designed for classroom teachers, mentors, and building administrators to improve and refine the manner in which 21st Century Skills are used to promote student engagement and achievement. The LoTi Classroom Teacher series explores the concepts of higher order thinking skills, differentiation, collaboration, and the use of technology to build effective communities of inquiry that help students develop 21st Century Skills and improve their academic achievement.

Millions of students regularly experience curricula and lessons that address content and concepts with which they're already familiar. It's not just the 'talented and gifted' kids; there are plenty of students who know the material in a particular learning unit before they even start. They're just never given the chance to demonstrate their knowledge ahead of time. Nor do they have the opportunity to request to be pre-tested.

The July issue of Education Update addresses ways educators are striving to develop students for work and life in the ever-changing 21st century. ASCD President Valerie Truesdale applauds the Association as it joins the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, which closely aligns with ASCD's Whole Child Initiative and allows ASCD to sit at the table with corporations like Dell, Apple, and Verizon.

The future is now at Boston's Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School. In last week's most-clicked ASCD SmartBrief story, we learned about this school with no textbooks, one laptop per student, parent-teacher IM conferences, and online drop boxes for homework assignments. Leveled software is used to differentiate learning experiences, and built-in automatic assessments help teachers pinpoint students' instructional needs. Advances in technology have also expanded the role of online courses in shaping schools-digital curriculum is going global and, some say, decreasing the number of teachers needed in a classroom. Replacing outdated textbooks with laptops, increasing student engagement, and more focused one-on-one instructional time-is there a downside to increasingly automated learning?

Your leadership success increases exponentially by the number of leaders you create within your organization. Teachers, as well as administrators, must accept their roles as leaders to properly integrate technology. Then and only then can long-term success be realized. In times of education bashing and dwindling resources, we must acknowledge that our most valuable assets are our human resources and allow our students to build our future in a positive direction in a technological, global society.

While many of us are just getting comfortable with the Internet and e-mail, Web 2.0 technologies are already changing the playing field for education. Though definitions of Web 2.0 vary, the one constant is that Internet users are now content providers rather than content receivers. The top-down approach of the Web we grew up with now has been replaced with users who build information from the bottom up. With Web 2.0, the focus is not on software or hardware, but on practices such as sharing thoughts and information through self-publishing and harnessing the collective intelligence of all users to generate information and solve problems. These technologies are creating huge changes in how educators and students receive and respond to information.

Technology plays a vital role in our schools' ability to serve instructional, operational and administrative needs. Every day we hear about another way in which technology and its applications are changing our field.

Educators may sometimes feel they are in a race against several clocks-the class period, the school day, the semester, the academic year, high school exit exams and so forth-as they prepare students for academic success. What can district leaders do to appropriately address issues of time and time management? How can they ensure that what is most important-student learning-is not at the mercy of things that are less urgent? As leaders weigh their options, research offers some important reminders.