5. The principal must support early adopters and risk takers.
6. The principal must do whatever it takes to ensure that all staff has early access to the very same digital tools that students will be using in their classrooms.
7. As the educational leader, the principal must make it crystal clear to the technology leader that all decisions relating to learning technology will be made by the educational leaders with input from the technology leaders. Not the other way around. In the balance between control of the technology and access for learning, the more important consideration must be access for learning.
8. The principal must set and support the expectation that student work will be done and stored using technology.
9. Principals must ensure that families and the public are kept informed about the school’s goals and progress relating to its use of technology as a learning resource.
10. The principal must be an active and public, champion for all students, staff members, and the school in moving the vision of fully integrating learning technology for the second decade of the 21st century.
The goal of the technology leader must be to make digital technology as available and transparent as paper, pencil, and books were in the 20th century learning process.
Effective integration of technology is about increasing student engagement and learning. And it’s not just about changing the way education happens. It’s also about changing the way we think about teaching and learning.
Some early proponents of integrating technology and learning believed that simply placing new technology in the hands of students and teachers was enough— that new laptops, digital cameras, interactive whiteboards, powerful programs, and 24/7 wireless access to the Internet for all students and teachers would magically improve learning.
What is the difference between schools where digital learning is the “best thing to happen to education in 20 years” and schools where computers and other technology tools became “like a decoration…just sitting there”? Experience and research tells us that a key variable is what the leadership of the school does and says.
1. Principals must effectively and consistently model the use of the same technology tools they expect teachers to use in their classrooms with the students.
A powerful way for a principal to model the use of technology is to integrate it into staff meetings in the same way teachers might in their classrooms.
2. Principals must be consistent in their decisions and expectations about integrating learning technology in the school.
3. The principal’s communication about the pace and process of integrating learning technology needs to be clear and reasonable.
4. The principal must provide appropriate professional development time and resources to support effective classroom implementation of technology.
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