Key Concept 14: Leadership Skills

In ET 680 with Dr. McGinn, we began the process of developing our possible idea for our Technology Planning Paper and ultimately our Internship Proposal by crafting broad and narrow Vision Statements for our current school. I chose to focus the Broad Vision statement on the ways technology can enhance our Arts program in a conscious decision to seek buy-in from the traditional heart of our school, the arts faculty. Any technology that our school purchases or acquires must be used in both artistic and academic settings if we are to develop students who fully embrace the future of promise of the best of technology. The Narrow Vision is more closely aligned with what I attempted to implement as part of my Internship project. This seemed to be a more accessible and tangible vision with direct and observable impact in our classrooms.

I began my planning process for the Technology Planning paper and ultimately my Internship project with a brainstorming session with my Principal. I presented a range of options of things we could try and we discussed what could have the most impact but in a way that was immediately possible with current equipment and staffing. We agreed that increasing the amount of formative assessments being done in the classroom was an instructional goal for her that I could facilitate the increase of by using technology, and thus made that the goal of my approved Internship Proposal. While she initially wanted to have the whole school involved, I convinced her that this would not be the most efficient way to implement the idea and proposed working with just the 10th grade teachers initially with the plan to include more staff in the following year. As a 10th grade team we have worked primarily with three different platforms for completing formative assessments and want to make a plan going forward for streamlining what we do commonly in our classrooms. In addition, I have been asked to provide some sessions at the beginning of next school year for the whole staff on how to use some of these same technologies to create and use formative assessments with students.