7377 | 7360 | 7370 | 9467 | 7366 | 9475 | 9471 | 9440 | 7378 | 9417
7366 Technology Leadership in Schools
Course Description
This course explored some of the issues involved in acquiring, maintaining and distributing technology in schools. Other technology decisions such as budgeting, finding ways to support staff members and providing training for new equipment were also explored.
Reflections
Around this time, my school was discussing forming a Technology Committee for the 2007-2008 school year. Our school is very concerned with school improvement plans and mission statements and goals, but despite all that there is no technology plan in place. There were rumors that the district was going to write a technology plan within the next year and the schools would be expected to follow. (As of January 2008, they are still working on the district plan). Technology Leadership in Schools was an excellent way for me to learn more about what technology decisions were being made at my school and issues and concerns that a good school technology plan would address.
The hard part about taking this course in the summer was that I did not have immediate access to any of the ETs or our school network administrator. The ET’s were both back in the US for the summer, as was I, and the network administrator was the only one who was still in Korea. When I was working on the facilities survey, I had to e-mail everyone and hope that they would respond. Fortunately, the network administrator was great at helping answer my questions.
Since I could not locate an official DoDDS Pacific technology plan, I had to analyze the DoDDS Europe plan. The document was difficult to navigate and the layout of the document was not satisfactory either. When evaluating the plan, I could see just how important it was to structure the plan in a logical manner.
Through my studies it really became clear how important it is to offer support when trying to adopt new technologies. When analyzing my own situation, it seemed that the school was more concerned with purchasing new equipment than it was with providing adequate training. At first, I felt as though my school had a lot of support, after all we had two ETs and a network administrator on campus. However, in later courses where I began to survey the faculty and gain more insight into their personal needs, it became apparent that many of the teachers felt unsupported and left behind. Even when I looked back at my own experiences with training conferences, I began to see how the district’s priority was not using the technology, simply acquiring it so that they could boast that it was there.
As part of my class work, I decided to write a staff development plan for DoDDS Pacific Art Department educators because I felt that the conference we had needed a follow up. Follow up is something that I noticed does not happen often enough in my school. Because DoDDS has such a high turnover in staff, our school also has the difficult task of keeping new teachers up to date on policies. Therefore, as one assignment I was able to make a Power Point overview of some of the most important policies regarding computer and internet usage.
I also had the chance to think about the responsibilities of all who are involved in keeping the school and the district’s technological acquisitions functional in the "Technology Team Plan." In this plan I was also able to see how other staff members such as the media specialists and committees in the school such as the Staff Development Committee, also play a part in maintaining the equipment and addressing needs in our school.
After taking this course I joined the newly formed Technology Committee at my school. Since then I have been helping make decisions about new technology acquisitions, policies and distribution. I even went to a conference in the fall of 2007 where we were given the task of developing a mini-training conference for our own school. The development of this training course became a big part of my studies in Instructional Systems Design, since the course coincided with the time I was given to develop and implement this training with my own faculty.