Leadership

After four years of work, this Wisconsin district's effort in creating its own online assessment program is paying off for teachers, students and the bottom line.

Instead of using scare tactics and statistics that are misleading, we must paint a realistic picture and use statistics appropriately. Rather than pass legislation that puts constraints on schools, Congress needs to fund online safety education and public awareness campaigns that show the true picture. "You can't get there from here." it's not just the punch line of a driving direction joke. For us educators, whose destination is the realization of educational technology's potential, that punch line sometimes seems closer to the truth than we like.

I'm a big Ken Robinson fan and have pointed to him many times such as in this post on his TED talk from 2006 (and see Sir Ken's ideas on public speaking here). Even if you saw the TED talk, you will enjoy this 15-minute presentation (given sans slides, as is the Sir Ken Robinson style) that he delivered in April of this year to an international crowd of school superintendents at the Apple Education Leadership Summit in San Francisco.

Check out the CEO Forum's final report, the Year 4 Report: Key Building Blocks for Student Achievement in the 21st Century or take the K-12 interactive STaR assessment.

Technology alone has little effect on improving student achievement. However, it can be a powerful tool to support the nine instructional strategies identified in Classroom Instruction that Works. This article from Learning & Leading with Technology (February, 2004 31(5)) briefly explains how the following technology tools can be used to support the nine instructional strategies.

This book suggests ways in which the research-based strategies in Classroom Instruction That Works can be used with educational technologies, such as word processing and spreadsheet applications, multimedia, data collection tools, communication software, and the Internet.

Make an impact on student achievement by becoming intensively involved in curricular and instructional issues. To be effective, share leadership with assistant principals, instructional coaches, teacher leaders, and leadership teams. While other areas are important and equally urgent, teaching and learning must be high priorities if student achievement is to be improved.

Develop a basic knowledge of shared leadership and gain insight into how it can help your school become a learning community. This four-week course introduces - definitions of shared leadership, school culture, and professional learning community and describes what these look like when they're present in a school - tools participants use to measure individual and school characteristics related to shared leadership - research on shared leadership and leadership practices identified as having a statistically significant relationship to student achievement - six functions of a school leader who effectively shares leadership: inspire, model, organize, monitor, support, reflect

Learn through stories from real schools, videos from exemplary classrooms, and a variety of research-based tools, all with a special emphasis on the role of 21st century teaching and learning skills. Developed and made popular by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, these skills represent how and what students should learn within the context of a curriculum and how teachers should model them in their teaching. As you learn, you will develop relationships with other principals and administrators taking the course. An integral part of this experience will be reflecting, sharing, and communicating with this online learning community.

Delve into the best available information from research on technology integration and new compelling video clips of real classrooms where students are engaged in content areas using technology. Gain a better understanding of the stages of technology integration and how to support teacher growth. The course addresses recent policy as well as portions of the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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 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.

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.