Reflections on Learning - Instructional Leadership

Here are my reflections on learning from my latest course.

Course Outcomes - Initially, I had anticipated that this course would be something other than a course based on technology literacy and 21st Century learning skills. While I was pleasantly surprised when presented with the actual course objectives, I was still somewhat wary of the content and delivery of the material. After the first week's videos, readings and assignments, I was convinced that the materials to be presented were authentic to my own person beliefs about technology and how it can be used in education. The fears that I speak of here were those created from attending many, many professional development sessions in which the presenter was obviously not one to really try the techniques presented, however radical - or not - they may be, or where the material presented just could not be used effectively in the classroom. I was pleased to see that content of this course was so appropriate to today's learning. I feel that I mastered the course objectives.

Relevance of Course Outcomes to My Work - I am a teacher of business computer applications, a creator of content for additional technology courses, and an integration strategist in my current position at my campus. In each of these roles, the learning I obtained in the Instructional leadership course will be helpful. In my role as a teacher, I will now be able to teach 21st Century skills by meeting my students "where they are". By this, I mean that I can make learning more relevant by incorporating the things that students do to learn about their world every day. In my job as a course content developer, I will be better able to see the relevance in particular activities and to design better learning, as it is applicable to students today. Finally, and most importantly, I will be able to help other teachers understand that the way we teach these students has to be not only strong in technolgy tools, but relevant to the way our students think.

Identified Areas for Growth - While I believe, as I mentioned in the first section of this reflection, that I met all the course, and my personal, learning goals, there are still many areas in which I can improve within this arena. First and foremost, while I am familiar with the STaR Chart and technology planning phases of identifying needs and creating strategies to address those needs, I am still lacking in how those strategies can be taken to the next level down and incorporated in the campus improvement plan, then used for setting school, departmental, and individual teacher goals for improvement. Our district has recently implemented similar strategies in regards to using AEIS data to develop CIPs and goals at all levels, then using updated data to adjust individual objectives in the interim. Aside from the translation of technology goals to the campus level, I would still identify the constant updating of my skill set to keep up with what's popular and beneficial to our students in regards to new and relevant technologies.

Course Assignments - The assignments within the Instructional Leadership course we relevant for understanding how technology leadership works in learning organizations and was especially helpful, since it caused me to probe for information and to fully understand the inner workings of my own district's connections between technology and learning. I especially enjoyed the week 4 assignment in which we were required to create an organization chart for our organization. As a district, my organization does not have a lot of formal structure, so building this chart based upon job roles and responsibilities, while somewhat challenging, was meaningful for a deeper understanding of strengths and possible areas for disconnect in communication or functional role. One assignment with which I have a deep level of understanding is the STaR Chart and Technology Plan writings. As our district's Educational Technology Coordinator last year, I was responsible for administering the STaR Chart and for ensuring that campuses used the survey's feedback in a useful way for developing campus improvement goals. Additionally, I was tasked with revising and submitting our district's technology plan.

Technology and Leadership Skills and Personal Growth - Over the 5 weeks associated with this course, I believe that I expanded my knowledge of technology, as it applies to a system for instructional leadership. The assignments related to the Texas STaR Chart Survey and Technology planning were helpful in growing my ability to understand the necessity of many state requirements, as well as how those feed into the campus improvement plan and to setting goals for the success of our students. The lessons on the new literacy and on 21st Century learning skills was enlightening, as well. This helped me to explain many of the things I see in the classroom every day. Now these new skills, including evaluating and processing large quantities of information, exposing knowledge, ethics in the Internet age, and creating digital content in multiple forms, can be measured by teachers and by campus administrators and other decision makers, so that we can have a guage by which to continue growing that learning.

Value of Blogs to the 21st Century Learner - We live in a new era. The way that we communicated before the web is a vague memory as we now have access to practically all the world's information within seconds. To quote David Warlick, "what questions will we ask when our students are walking in with Google in their pockets? Will they be better questions than we are askign today?" Our students - the digital natives, the 21st Century citizens, must learn to be content creators. Writers, sure. Communicators, by all means. But also real, effective creators and owners of digital content. Our students, and other, many, many others, who write on the web are the owners of the web. Their spaces are the new newsprint and AM radio. Their audiences, while possibly not as large as those of major broadcast or print publications, are no less important. Our students have the kind of voice that we never had, as the kids who would go to the front of the class and read our essay to the other 24 there, our always-ready captive audience.

Concerns with Blogs and Blogging - As with any online tool, blogs are continually under the scrutiny of parents, teachers, school administrators and other stakeholders. Two specific factors affecting this degree of concern are the privacy and safety of our students. Online safety is a growing concern due to the web being more of a place oriented toward the creation of digital content, along with the consumption of such material. As students are given the opportunity to put things online, the chance exists, despite what we teach, that personal and identifying information, material harmful to a students reputation, or other potentially hazardous data could be posted somewhere on the Internet. how do we find the right answer - the thing that will protect our students whil allowing them to participate, as digital citizens, in what may be the one arena that will still exist for communication at the end of their academic career? We must be the gatekeepers, balancing strong, authentic learning experiences with a safe, monitored, framework for using the web as a tool for communication and collaboration.

Blogging to Engage Student Stakeholders - As a user of blogs as a means of communicating with my students and as a tool for monitoring their progress toward their personal learning goals, I know that this is a means of engaging students in today's classroom. Countless conversations have sprung from a response to a blog post that I initiated and then turned into a conversation that I could sit back and watch, fully observing students' level of understanding of the topic addressed. Additionally, using individual student blogs as a basis for an online learning journal or e-portfolio, I have seen many students go far above the assigned work, as their blog takes wings and becomes a project of personal interest and expression. Blogs will, without a doubt, continue to be an integral and indespensible part of my teaching, as well as one of the methodologies I find to be most helpful in my class and for others across multiple content areas and grade levels.