Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Superstructing: R&D and T&L

I've heard the word "superstructing" many times at ASB, but only this morning did I come to appreciate how this concept ties everything together.  In a presentation by Madeleine Heide to the new teachers this morning, we came to see how superstructing has evolved at ASB so that it underpins the way the school is fulfilling the mission, the core values and the strategic plan.

One of the things that we talked about in small groups right at the beginning is the mindset, skills and tools that are needed for ASB to achieve its strategic plans.  This got me thinking about a blog post from Silvia Tolisano last year where you will find some great graphics that describe how important all of these are.  I was interested to hear that Heidi Hayes Jacobs is going to be using the work ASB is doing on superstructing in her new book.  The term superstruct originally came from a game designed by Jane McGonigal - her TED talk was about how she believes playing games can lead to solutions to real world problems  (see this blog post).  Jane explains that superstructing involves putting a whole new structure onto a prior structure to do something new that you couldn't do before.  Jane writes:
Superstructing means reinventing our tools and processes, our organizational structures and even our concepts of cooperation and collaboration.
Jane's blog gives details of the outcomes you can monitor as indicators that you are on your way to the kind of reinvention necessary for success in the next decade:
  • achieving more and different participation
  • implementing once inconceivable possibilities
  • inventing and testing smaller and bigger practices
  • creating stranger and more shareable products
  • designing and participating in new world-changing practices
Click here to find a PDF version of this with more details on Jane's blog.

It is highly unusual for a school to want to do all these things - to want to superstruct - but ASB is doing just that.  It is removing outdated models of committee work, giving people choices in the way they participate in the changes, facilitating everyone learning leadership skills as these are the skills teachers need to get good at to move forward, using time differently (which is difficult as schools function in very traditional ways) and prototyping.

ASB is superstructing through two core teams the R&D (research and development) and the T&L (teaching and learning) teams.  The diagram below is taken from ASB's Superstruct blog and explains the relationship between the two core teams: 


Madeleine explained how the T&L team's role is to make end results happen now, while the R&D team is looking ahead of the curve at what was possible or what could be invented to make a difference to education in the future.  The T&L team set up different task forces to look at current issues such as 21st century skills, high student achievement, assessment, differentiation and so on - these are the things that ASB has to implement now as they impact on the teaching and learning of today's students.  The R&D core team set up other task forces to look at project based learning, multi-age classrooms, online/blended learning, BYOD, games based learning, green education and so on.  These are the things ASB is prototyping for possible implementation in the future.  These teams are open to anyone who wants to join, and there are are no other committees at the school.  In this way ASB has been superstructing: using what existed from before, but organizing things differently in order to achieve the strategic plan.

I was curious to hear the feedback at the end of the first year of superstructing.  It seems clear that the faculty loved being given choices and loved the way they could participate at whatever level they chose.  They also loved the ambitious goals, the collaboration across all areas of the school and the learning that was going on.  Teachers felt they were part of a school that was moving forward.  Some of the challenges teachers identified was that there was too much going on and that made clarity, communication and decision making hard.  Teachers commented on the challenges to do with the processes, but not the actual work that they were engaged in.

So - that's the history and this is where I have arrived.  How do we move forward from here?  Well this year the focus is on simplicity.  We need to be focused on our work and move away from the investigating and talking to looking at the impact we are making - this after all is the measure of our success - how all these new initiatives are having an impact in the classroom on teaching and learning. 

This year there are 2 goals for T&L, as follows:
  • personalizing learning - high student achievement and individualized learning  It's not just about differentiation, it's looking at the individual child!
  • mastery of 21st century skills - through standards, curriculum, instruction, assessment PD and learning environments
In addition there are 3 areas that the R&D core team wants to go into on a much deeper level:
  • project based learning
  • games based learning
  • alternative schedules and structures for the school year.
There will be collaboration with university researchers and divisional prototyping of these and ASB has set up an international research collaborative with a few other leading international schools.

These are exciting times to be at ASB, and I'm blessed to be a part of them!


Photo Credit: sueƱos...del futuro by Ruurmo, 2005   AttributionShare Alike 

Sunday, July 29, 2012

The Whys?

In our first orientation meeting with our Superintendent, Craig Johnson, we were asked a couple of questions:  Why did we choose to work at ASB? and Why did ASB choose us?  Interesting questions.  For me, the big attraction was that I wanted to be back in a school that was cutting edge, that was using technology to transform learning, that was making informed, data-driven decisions about how technology can support teaching and learning, that was empowering both teachers and students.  In part it was because I wanted to get away from a culture where members of the leadership team made comments such as "cloud computing will fail", "there is no evidence that technology supports learning" and "we are not interested in a 1:1 laptop programme because students already spend too much time looking at screens."  I wanted to work in a school that was thinking forward and where questioning the status quo was encouraged.  I wanted to work in a place that was always asking "Can we do this better" rather than saying "We're one of the best schools in the world, so we just need to keep on doing what we're doing."

But why did ASB choose us?  Well to answer that question Craig referred to a book called "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell.  This was a book that was recommended for our international schools' professional reading group last year (and I hope the group continues next year and that they read it and share it with teachers from other local international schools).  Before Craig answered that question, he talked to us about different places in Mumbai where you can get a haircut:  a swanky salon, a mid-range place or a seat by the side of the road.  What makes someone choose one place rather than another?  Cost, perhaps?  Quality?  ASB is already an "outlier".  It's in the "swanky salon" league as far as fees go.  In a city with almost 40 international schools within a 10 mile radius of ASB, why do parents choose to send their children to a school where the fees are more than twice as high as the competitor schools, probably the highest fees of any international school in the world?  The reason for that is the teachers.  We were chosen by ASB because we too are outliers.  The quality of education we can offer is second to none,

I wanted to find out more.  I wanted to know what makes someone an outlier.  Of course I downloaded the book within minutes!

In chapter 1 of the book, Gladwell writes about a pattern among those who are successfuil in sports.  Depending on the sport, be it hockey. basketball or football, the successful players are invariably born in the months immediately following the cut-off date for age,and these are the ones who are bigger and stronger than those born later in the year.  Way back at the start of their careers, the bigger and stronger children benefit from extra coaching, more play time and so on, which over time leads to then actually becoming better players.   Making a decision early one about which players are talented and which are not, gives a huge advantage to those born closest to the cut off date.

Interestingly enough, the same pattern seems to be shown in education:  a small initial advantage that a child born in the early part of the school year has over the child born at the end of the year persists - it shows itself in achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement.  Teachers, it seems are confusing maturity with ability and giving the oldest students the most attention.  Gladwell refers to this as the Matthew Effect - those who are successful are given the opportunities to become more successful.  Success, he writes, is an "accumulative advantage".

What are the implications of this for schools?  Well my new school is considering different sorts of groupings in the future.  Perhaps this is one of the things that may be considered when thinking about such groupings.

The next chapter of Outliers is equally interesting and also very applicable to education.  I've heard about the 10,000 hour rule before, but didn't know it came from Gladwell.  In Chapter 2, Gladwell writes:
Achievement is talent plus preparation.  The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role that preparation seems to play.
He quotes from a study done in the 1990s By Ericsson at the Berlin Academy of Music about how many hours the musicians had practiced.  Although all the musicians started playing their instrument around the age of 5, real differences started to emerge at the age of 8 when some students started to practice more than the others.  By the age of 20 these top performers had each totalled 10,000 hours of practice.  Ericsson's study did not find any "natural" musicians who became experts while practicing less, nor did he find anyone who worked harder than the rest but who didn't make it.  The only distinguishing factor was how hard the musician worked (how often they practiced).  Gladwell writes:
The people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else.  They work much, much harder ... Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good.  It's the thing you do that makes you good.
The 10,000 hour rule appears to apply not just to musicians, but also to sports players, writers, and so on.  Generally this is approximately 10 years of study.  For young people it's impossible to achieve 10,000 hours of study all by yourself - you have to have parents who encourage and support you.  Recently I watched a programme about young people in England who were training for the Olympics - clearly the entire family sacrificed to take these young athletes to practice.

Sometimes it's not just the family, it's being given an extraordinary opportunity and also being in the right place at the right time.  When I reflect on this myself, it was pure chance that took me to my first international school in Amsterdam (I met my husband, who is Dutch, by chance as I was travelling through Portugal one summer).  However in the years I was there I was definitely given extraordinary opportunities (certainly I was given 10,000 hours) to develop myself as an international teacher.  The opportunities I had there, and at the next school I moved to, NIST in Thailand, gave me the encouragement and the opportunities to become the teacher I am today.  I am eternally grateful.  I would never be here now without these amazing schools and the wonderful teachers and administrators who worked in them and encouraged me to be the best I could be.

This is what I'm looking forward to here.  Learning new things, becoming better.

Image Credit:  Idiot Question? by C.J. Sorg, 2006 AttributionShare Alike 

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Inspire, Empower, Courage, Dreams

One of the activities we did during orientation was to look at the school's mission statement which had 4 words blanked out.  These words were important - we had to decide what they were and why they were so important.  They are such strong words, especially when compared to other mission statements I've come across.  There was no emphasis on academic achievement per se,  the focus was more on service to others.  Inspiration is something very active, it's much stronger than motivation.  Here is the mission statement:

We inspire all of our students to continuous inquiry, empowering them with the skills, courage, optimism, and integrity to pursue their dreams and enhance the lives of others.


Photo Credit:  Individual Protection by Martin Gommell, 2008 AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works

Friday, July 27, 2012

Embracing India

Finally - all the waiting is over and my daughter and I are in India.  At our first orientation meeting yesterday we talked about many things (why we had chosen ASB, why ASB had chosen us - more about this in another post).  We were also given some advice from teachers at the school - the most important piece of advice seems to be this:  embrace India.

We watched this video which I think is a great introduction to our new adventure:

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Managing your online reputation

In his book LOL ... OMG Matt Ivester gives students good advice about how to create their own positive online identity.  This starts with discovering what your online presence is by Googling yourself with the custom search feature turned off so that the results are not based on your past search history, but instead you get to view the results as others would see them.  Matt explains that to be really thorough in searching for yourself online you should also consider the 34% of searches that don't go through Google, therefore you should also do a search using Yahoo! and Bing and a people search on Intelius or Spokeo.  These last two only really work for people based in the USA, however, as an international person I don't appear on these at all, despite the fact that on Google there are over 16,000 hits that relate directly to me.

Another suggestion Matt makes is to claim your name to stop someone impersonating you.  The way to do this is to register your name as a username on all the most popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  He also recommends registering your name as a .com domain, which can be done via GoDaddy.com for $10 per year.

If, when you search for your name, you come across content that you or others have posted that you would rather not be there, you can request that the information is removed.  This can work out costly in both time and money, and as I found out a few years ago when I tried to help a friend who had a malicious Facebook group set up by students about her, it's very difficult to get content that someone else has posted about you removed in this way, just because you don't like it.  In this situation it's possibly a better option to "bury" what you don't want showing up on the first page of the search results by adding as much positive content about yourself as possible and then making sure this content shows up high in the search results.  This can often be achieved by cross-linking your content between the different tools.

Image by Fadhila Brahimi, 2000 AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike

Monday, July 23, 2012

Open authorship

These days anyone can publish anything online.  Most of the time, to sign up for a Web 2.0 account you need an email address, but sometimes not even that.  Open authorship has been amazingly positive in many respects, probably the most important of these is that you can reach audiences who would otherwise be completely inaccessible.  Open authorship has been important in many political movements too, for example last year's Arab Spring where bloggers and tweeters were able to communicate what they experienced with rest of the world straight from their mobile phones.  As a result free speech and democracy have flourished and the outrage generated when someone's right to this free speech was curtailed was seen recently following the attempt by a Scottish council to ban 9 year old Martha Payne from writing her NeverSeconds blog posts about school lunches.

Open authorship also means that you have to be more protective of your online reputation.  As Matt Ivester writes in LOL...OMG
Your online reputation is often the first impression that you create.  Before someone knows anything about you, you have a clean slate.  Then he or she searches your name online and begins to form an impression of you ... Whatever the impression, any contradictory information received after the original impression is made comes under suspicion and must be proven - you must fight to refute the impression that has already begun to form in his or her mind.  You're much better off giving a strong first impression if you can.
I connect with some of my former students using both Facebook and LinkedIn.  A couple of days ago I noticed a post on Facebook by one of these who is now at college.  This one word post was hammered@khaosan.  I couldn't help but wonder what damage this could be doing to his online reputation, especially as he must be in his last year of studies and so can't be far away from applying for jobs.  This will obviously have a significant impact on the way that possible future employers will view him should they come across this post during a social background check.  Matt Ivester points out in his book that 70% of recruiters admit to having rejected a candidate based on information that they have found online, citing concerns about lifestyle because of inappropriate comments and unsuitable photos or videos.  Matt writes "The content that you put up online isn't likely to get you the job, but it very well may prevent it.

Matt recommends several levels of privacy for different social media tools such as Facebook and Google+, with a minimum of 3 different groups:  family and friends, professional and acquaintances.  This separates those you know and trust from those you don't know very well and from the people that you work with.  Even with these different groups, it's important to understand that anything that is shared privately is only a couple of clicks away from being public.  He writes "Sometimes in the digital age your only real choice is between sharing your content with everyone and sharing your content with no one."

Photo Credit:  la cuarta ventana by bachmont, 2008 Attribution

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Transitions

This morning I woke up early because I was excited. This is the week I'm moving to India to take up my position at my amazing new school. I'm traveling to London the day after tomorrow, then to Holland and then flying to Mumbai. By the end of the week I'll officially have started at ASB and will be involved in the orientation into my new school and new life. And yet it feels like I've already started. The day after I finished my old job, my new school flew me out to the ISTE conference where I met and worked with some of my new colleagues. It's the best start to a new school I've ever experienced in my 24 years of international education. When I went on to make a presentation at the TeachMeet at Cambridge University last weekend I did so proudly representing my new school, not my old one. I've avoided the limbo of being between jobs because I've immediately been able to distance myself from some of the negative experiences of the past few years as I've been fired up by the energy that comes from working in a leading international school again. I love the fact that I'll probably be working harder than I ever have before, that I'll be learning more too, that I'll be able to fully develop myself and share my experiences with a vibrant learning community. I love the fact that my new school is committed to research and development and that it has now launched an Interenational Research Colaborative partnership with other leading international schools to evaluate educational practices and beliefs about teaching and learning.

 A few days after the TeachMeet in Cambridge, I met up again with one of the organizers who is interested in becoming an international teacher himself. We spent several hours talking about recruitment and the best ways for candidates to really discover what schools are like before they start there. Although I haven't used a recruitment firm for many years, I do believe that they are useful ways into employment in international schools, especially for those seeking their first or second overeseas posts. For myself however, the experiment of "reverse recruiting" using social media was second to none. When I tell people that my first contact with my new school was via Twitter I can see eyebrows shooting up. However the truth is that I used Twitter and Gmail and Skype and I also made an online CV using Blogger. For 21st century educators who are well established with good international reputations I can't imagine a better way to obtain the job of your dreams.

Photo Credit:  Jump in Motion by Jolantis, 2006 AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works

Taking risks without repercussions

With one of my children just finished university this summer, and another about to start, I've thought a lot about keeping in touch with my children online. During the 3 years my son has been away our most common form of contact has been through Skype, email, WhatsAp and Dropbox. We've also intermittently connected via Twitter and through our blogs. We are not connected through Facebook. I believe my son is a responsible person and that he's not posting inappropriate things there and that he keeps an eye on his digital reputation. I'm wondering how I will keep in touch with my daughter once she has left home. I imagine we'll Skype and email. In contrast with my son, her Facebook account is open to the world. Is this a good idea, I'm wondering? Clearly she seems to think that everything she posts there is appropriate for anyone to see. However, while she may be responsible in what she posts, I'm concerned about the things others may post about her or tag her in.

For most young people university is a place where they can experiment and find out who they are. They can make mistakes and learn from these mistakes. However these mistakes are now often very visible, shared with everyone that they know and also with complete strangers.  The everlasting  repercussions of these mistakes, which are stored online indefinitely, can come back to haunt them many years later.  Young people are often thoughtless about what they post - a photo or a comment added on the spur of the moment, because it's funny at the time perhaps, can also be downloaded just as quickly and so can have long-term consequences for themselves and their friends.  I'm hoping that as a parent I've had enough of these conversations with my daughter.  I'm hoping that she places value on being a good and responsible digital citizen and has a good understanding of the fact that when you post something online you are giving up control of it forever.


Ideas in this post from LOL...OMG by Matt Ivester
Photo Credit:  Chaos by Brett Weinstein, 2007  AttributionShare Alike

Monday, July 16, 2012

Raspberry Jam

Yesterday I went to the Raspberry Jam at Cambridge University.  Alan O'Donohoe, Raspberry Jam's Chairman asked for a show of hands as to who in the audience was in each of the following 4 groups:

  • Those who have a Raspberry Pi and know what to do with it 
  • Those who have a Raspberry Pi and don't know what to do with it 
  • Those who don't have a Raspberry Pi but who know what to do with it 
  • Those who don't have a Raspberry Pi and who don't know what to do with it 
It seems there is a thriving community of people who are using the Raspberry Pi, and the possibilities for education are really exciting.  One of the speakers, Dr Andrew Robinson from the University of Manchester explained that he wants to encourage more people into computer science by running a Scratch animation competition using the Pi. He talked about how children have a 10 second hook to get interested in something - and that needs to be observable and testable. When he heard about the Raspberry Pi he was interested because he saw that they could get a result in 10 seconds that would show them the potential of the Pi.  For example they could see a game which would encourage them to want to play the game, and to play the game they would have to learn more about the Pi in order to go further. The whole idea is to capture their interest.  Andrew has developed activity sheets and lesson plans for using the Pi.  Details can be found on the PiFace website.


 Another really interesting project using the Pi is Eye SPi.  This is conservation education from London Zoo.  Alasdair Davies and Gary Fletcher have developed an Instant Wild app as part of a citizen science project to identify rare and endangered animals. They use cameras around the world and post photos of different animals that people can help them to identity. The aim of the project is to have children use the Raspberry Pi and build a camera that they can put out in their gardens or around their homes to capture footage of UK wildlife. They also talked about the technology challenge of creating a mesh camera network that can penetrate into the depths of nature reserves to relay images to a device that can communicate with a satellite phone to send images. It was important that this didn't require cellular communication, was low in power usage and cheap with low maintenance costs. They thought the Raspberry Pi could be used for this, enabling them to track animals and migration movements.  Here is a link to Gary's website about London Zoo (ZSL) Instant Wild project and how they plan to use the Raspberry Pi.


Liam Fraser spoke next. He is an 18 year old student and is the creator of Raspberry Pi tutorials on YouTube. These tutorials show the set up of the Pi, how to make TV games and so on. He's currently working on tutorials for using the Pi with Macs.  In the past 6 months Liam's tutorials have been viewed almost a million times!  Click here to go to the Raspberry Pi tutorials. 


Keith Dunlop then spoke about  an alternative Operating system for the Raspberry Pi. He showed us the RISC OS that was developed by Acorn in 1987 that now comes on an SD card that fits into the Pi.  It. Obtains text, a vector drawing programme and Basic as a programming language.  Here is a link to the RISC OS website.


Industry is also interested in the Raspberry Pi.  Many companies need more young people to come into their businesses in the future and computer science skills are important for businesses that design electronic control products.  William Gardiner from Heber spoke about the X10i that his company has produced as an extension to the Pi containing stereo audio, extra battery and so on. Here is a link to the Heber website with information about how the X10i works with the Raspberry Pi.


So, my answer to the first question is this.  I do now have a Raspberry Pi, and I'm slowly but surely finding out what to do with it.


And finally ... here is a link to the Raspberry Pi website

Free range -v- house arrest

I was flicking through a National Trust magazine today and read an article about the fact that children today do not have the freedom that adults enjoyed in their own childhood to spend time in nature.  As a child growing up in the 1960s I enjoyed probably the same freedoms that my parents and grandparents did when they were the same age.  I could walk to friends' houses, I could walk to school or take public transport by myself.  My brother who was an avid train spotter spent hours roaming round the country involved in this hobby, I could go out walking a dog by myself, roaming through fields and woods, jump streams and sometimes fall in them, camp out with friends, lie on my back at night and look up at the stars..  Now, the National Trust argues, the "radius of activity" (the distance children are allowed to venture from home on their own or with friends) has decreased by 90% and as a consequence perhaps they quote another statistic which is that 11 - 15 year olds in the UK spend 50% of their time in front of a screen.  It makes it sound as if this is something bad - as if our free range childhoods have now been replaced by house arrest,.  And yet when I think about it technology has made my children's lives much safer than when I was their age - and as a parent I'm more able to keep track of them.  They have mobile phones, they can call and let me know where they are, how they are coming home, what time I should expect them.  I think it's sad that fewer than 10% of UK children regularly play in wild places, compared with 50% when I was young, especially when information about wild places is now so much more accessible, for example a couple of months ago I walked the Via Gotthardo in Switzerland with a friend using just the apps on my mobile phone to guide me.  I think that technology should be able to help us to give our children more of a free range existence than ever before, but it appears that all it is doing is keeping our children at home.

Untitled photo by Habeebee, 2011

Saturday, July 7, 2012

The backwards flip

I've heard a lot about flipping the classroom over recent months and everything I've heard and read has been interesting. As an IT teacher I've been able to reflect on flipping the classroom too, and I realize that I have done this, however I've done it in reverse.

Picture the situation 3 years ago. Students came to the IT lab, logged onto their network accounts and worked on something that would support their units of inquiry. Everything the students did was stored in their folders on the school server. They couldn't get to this work from home, so couldn't share it with anyone outside of school.  The only place they could create was at school and in the IT lab.

Fast forward. Students still come to the computer lab ... sometimes. Sometimes I also go to their classrooms. We don't create very much in school, but I show the students a lot and let them play and discover things for themselves. Everything we do is Web 2.0. Nothing is stored at school. The students go home, having explored and played around and taught themselves and others how to use the various tools and they create at home (or anywhere else) to show their understanding of the concepts they have been learning about in school.  They post their work onto their own blogs, or maybe onto a class blog.  They share this work with the entire world.

For me, "backwards flipping" the classroom has also been a way of empowering the students.

Photo Credit:  Laurie flipping out by Jared Tarbell, 2010 Attribution

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Why we don't need more PD

At the ISTE conference another session I attended was with Sylvia Martinez, the President of Generation YES. Sylvia spoke about teachers who won't use technology and asked why. Often it is because the technology they have doesn't work for them. They want something better for their students. Everyone assumes that given more PD they would be more confident in deciding to use the technology, but Sylvia argued that this os often not the case. They don't want more PD, what they need is the right support when using IT. With traditional PD, teachers learn something in a workshop, but where they need to learn it is in the classroom. Over and over again I've seen training, for example on how to use a SMARTboard, that doesn't lead to changed pedagogy in the classroom. It's simply a matter of doing old things in new ways. Supporting teachers to use technology to change their practice and to transform rather than simply enhance learning needs to happen in the classroom. Teachers often need to learn alongside and at the same times their students before they are able to use the IT themselves. Research has shown that training at the place of practice, supporting teachers in their classrooms, is the most effective form of PD.

How can we do this? The answer seems to lie with team teaching or action research, which involves learning while you teach and reflecting on what you have done. Another model advocated by Sylvia is to train students to provide technical support for teachers. Students appreciate playing such an important role as ambassadors for tech use and at the same time this models collaborative learning. Since over 90% of people in schools are students, training them to assist and teach teachers could be more effective than spending money on outside PD. Students can be involved in building the vision and striving to achieve it. In schools that are successful with using technology it is to be expected that tech support issues will increase, and students can step up as volunteers to the "tech genius" bar.

Sylvia made the statement that you can't empower students without empowering teachers. Generation YES appears to be doing just that.

Resources 
GenYES -Suudent powered technology integration
TechYES - Student Technology literacy certification programme

Photo Credit:  Four heads are better than one by Nic McPhee, 2006   AttributionShare Alike 

Monday, July 2, 2012

Visionary Leadership

At ISTE I went to a session with Kyle Pace and Steven Anderson where they unpacked the NETS-A with a call for visionary leadership. A year ago when my old school was looking for a tech director I wrote a post about the sort of person I thought we needed. The actual job description the school had come up with was very nebulous and is certainly out of sync with the educational technology standards for administrators as described by ISTE: 


Visionary leadership
- Planning for technology and being involved in the planning process 
- Having and funding a technology leadership staff 
- Making funding for technology and integration a priority 
Kyle and Steven discussed how people in power sometimes block technology for no real reason and don't understand the use of tools in the classroom. There is a need to understand the importance of technology for students' futures and for that you need the visionary leadership. If you are not an administrator using technology then you cannot effectively evaluate a teacher's use of technology. 


Digital age learning culture 
- Technology is used and embraced by all leaders 
- Leaders seek out new opportunities for technology integration for themselves and encourage others to do the same.  They attend conferences, workshops and seminars to further their understand the importance of technology.   Everyone in the school needs to be on the same page and so administrators should go with their teachers to these conferences so they can learn together and then implement this learning when back at school again.. 


Excellence in professional practice
- Involvement with social networks. Administrators should build a PLN, read educational blogs and be connected educators.
- As they use and encourages the use of a PLN, they will understand the importance of teachers participating in online PD.  This form of PD needs to be recognized as it is what teachers want - teachers are taking back control of their own PD and need to be supported. 


Systematic improvement
- Providing the means for funding for the improvement of technology.
- Reaching out to the community using social media etc to gain further understanding 
- Allowing all educators to seek out new opportunities for PD 


 Digital citizenship
- Modelling technology use
- Promoting, modeling and establishing policies for safe, legal and ethical use of digital information and technology.  It's impossible to teach students these without using social media.  
- Maintaning a blog to personally reflect on educational issues. It's difficult to change practice if you are not reflecting on it. A blog opens line of communication. 


Photo Credit:  :) by Seyed Mostafa Zamani, 2011 Attribution