Assignment #4 - 1:1 Technology

It appears that the commonality within the 4 articles we read for this assignment is that focusing on the 1:1 technology shift won’t solve any problems for school districts and won’t magically improve the academic progress of a school. Rather, it is all about the implementation of these programs and how they are utilized. There seem to be so many examples out there of “failure” of these 1:1 programs, probably within schools we all work at simply because devices are placed into the hands of students, but the “how” and “what” is not placed into the hands of the educators teaching these students. It is no different than if I was to take for example a digital leadership class and the professor, lets call him Ben Tallone, was to give me a device to use and then told me to teach others in the class, lets call them Tuhi, Kati, Lewis, Dominick, Carolee, and Ally, about Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms without providing me any modeling, instruction, or guidance. If this outlandish example were to take place, the negative results are not to be blamed on the device I was provided, but rather the lack of knowledge or understanding I had on how to implement the device. Because there are so many of these poor examples out there, in theory, it should be pretty easy for us to learn from these situations. We as leaders need to provide the knowledge, provide the “how”, and “what” to our educators prior to placing these devices in their students hands so that their students can reap the benefits of having access to these technological platforms and devices and to help guide and enhance their learning appropriately. I feel that as a leader, it is important to fully invest in the NETS-A Standard 1_a and provide a culture of purposeful change that will help influence everyone involved to utilize digital resources. It is important to not only utilize these resources as I mentioned, simply to say we did it, but rather work hard on maximizing the digital platform as a way to make sure students are meeting the specified learning targets of the CCSS. There is more and more collaboration being offered in education today due to the PLC focus that can be utilized to improve the methods of how we implement digital technology into the classroom through collaboration and focusing on the CCSS. As a future leader, I really NEED to improve my own digital knowledge as well as my comfort level of the digital platforms. One thing that was discussed quite a bit in several of our readings today was the fact that educators need to feel that leaders are ok with them “failing” so to speak. As leaders, we need to share that we are ok with things not going well, lessons falling apart for one reason or another, students not having success with a topic. If we don’t have unsuccessful experiences, we aren’t going to grow and these experiences are what help us improve. This will also improve our culture as a school because it will foster questions, and people seeking for guidance from others. This is one thing I feel I do well currently, I fail quite regularly, and am ok with it. I am a perfectionist in many aspects of my life, so its not to say it doesn’t bother me, but I know there are going to be those days that things just don’t work out. The important thing is how do I follow up these experiences, how to I improve next time, and how to get the help I need if I don’t have the answers. Leaders need to provide this and make sure all people involved fully understand failing isn’t something scary, but rather it is dare I say… an expectation.