Description:

Identifies and examines educational and cultural issues associated with technology and historical, political, social, and cultural critiques of technology within the context of teaching and learning. Letter grade only.

Competency:

Standard 1: Visionary Leadership

In the final assignment for this class, we formed a project team to implement an educational technology project and apply for grant money for the project. To me, this project symbolizes what Visionary Leadership is all about. We found an opportunity to create a transformational change in our school that would open up new and exciting opportunities for our students. This project demonstrated how to function as a visionary leader that supports transformational change.

The project team had to utilize all 4 subsections of this standard and tap into resources related to each standard:

A. Shared Vision: Candidates contribute to the development, communication, and implementation of a shared vision for the comprehensive use of technology to support a digital-age education for all students. This required project management skills to work with all of the stakeholders to create a shared vision based on each person's needs.

B. Strategic Planning: Candidates contribute to the planning, development, communication, implementation, and evaluation of technology-infused strategic plans at the district and school level. Knowledge of the district's strategic plan in order contribute ideas that are compatible with the vision of the administration.

C. Programs & Funding: Candidates advocate for programs and funding strategies to support implementation of the shared vision represented in the school and district technology plans and guidelines. Knowledge of emerging technologies that might be used to solve a problem or create an opportunity within your educational environment.

D. Innovation and Change: Candidates implement strategies for initiating and sustaining technology innovations and manage the change process in schools and classrooms. This required another area of project management relating to change management; Creating a timeline for implementing the new technology that would be least disruptive to the school's functioning.

Standard 5: Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship is the way one behaves and treats others while on-line. It is an extension of your moral, ethical, and legal persona, a matter of acting on-line as you would in person.

Our lesson plan assignment in this course (document linked at the bottom of the page) allowed us to create an example of how we might model various aspects of being a good digital citizen to our students. It provided several hands-on opportunities for students to learn about Equitable Access; Safe, Healthy, Legal and Ethical Use; and Cultural Understanding and Global Awareness.

There are several resources available on-line to support teaching global citizenship. There are videos on internet safety, social media platforms that students may already be working with, and websites related to learning about different cultural norms.

Reflection:

I often find this section very difficult to write because I come from a different background than the normal teacher. My career started with a BS in Broadcasting from NAU back in 1992. Later, I got my Masters in Information Systems Management in 2008. I have multiple IT and Project Management certifications. Because of this background, it can be hard for me to come up with something that I learned about technology or project management from these courses.

What I do find, however, is that much of the material validates what I have been trying to do as an experienced broadcast & information technology professional to teach students by using real-world experiences (or at least as real as I can replicate in the classroom). One of the challenges I have coming into teaching from the industry can be finding the right vocabulary and terminology to explain what I'm trying to do to those with formal training in Education. Many of these people have a very traditional view of education from the perspective of teaching basic subjects like English, Math, Social Studies, etc.: Stand at the front of the room and lecture, have them write papers and take tests. This model doesn't always fit well when teaching a project oriented technology course where the primary deliverable is not a writing assignment.

The final assignment is modeled after the program I teach at Newark High School. It uses a constructivist methodology to have students create videos. The video is the assignment, not a paper or test about how to make a video. I'm proud of this assignment in this course, because I feel it validates what I'm doing based on the response from my peers. This program is helping me to better communicate with the education professionals that I have to coordinate with on a daily basis.