Professional Development for Educational Leaders on Integrating Technology into Classrooms Part V by Diane H. Zack

Educational leaders have a professional responsibility to provide focused professional development to support teachers learning to create engaging lessons and curricula that incorporate technology and 21^st Century Skills.  The following is the last of a five-part series designed to provide educational leaders insights on the content, structure, and strategies necessary to support teachers learning to integrate technology into their curriculum.

Part 5: A Challenge to Educational Leaders: Embrace Your Role as the Digital Instructional Leader within your Learning Community

As an educational leader, have you embraced your role as a digital instructional leader?  Are you following the International Standards for Education Technology [ISTE] and modeling 21^st Century Skills within your daily work?  In your last presentation, did you model new educational technology that you discovered while interacting with your online learning community?  Did you purposefully design your presentation to be engaging, to be interactive, and to provide opportunities for choice?  Are you challenging yourself to model educational technology and to design effective professional development – the kind where teachers are more likely to make incremental changes to their instruction, which can lead to increased student understandings? 

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology, technology can empower and inspire teachers to make changes to their lessons to increase the potential of all learners (USDOE, 2017).  Professional learning must support and develop our educators to be fluent in the use of technology.  Teachers must learn to be creative, adaptive, socially aware and collaborative problem solvers (USDOE, 2017).  Technology has the potential to “accelerate, amplify, and expand the impact of powerful principles of learning” (USDOE, 2017, p 12).  Educational leaders, especially school administrators, have to be “leaders of learning” (Harvey, J., Holland, H., & Cummins, H.J., 2013).  According to the Wallace Foundation, one of the principal’s five key responsibilities is to, “Improve instruction to enable teachers to teach at their best and students to learn to their utmost” (2013, p 6).  Educational leaders have a responsibility to provide teachers with the tools, opportunities, and professional development to make the necessary changes to their curricula.

As an Educational Leader, are you up to Standard?

The most recent Educational Technology Standards for Educational Leaders provide a specific blueprint for educational leaders to follow.  School leaders must use technology to become advocates for equity and citizenship, visionary planners, systems designers, empowering leaders, and connected learners (ISTE, 2018).  To become digital leaders in 21^st Century schools, we must use technology to model the standards and practices teachers are expected to incorporate into their classroom lessons (Shepherd & Taylor, 2019).  Digital leaders are instructional leaders who use technology to model the ISTE Standards within their daily work.

As Equity and Citizenship Advocates, digital leaders “increase equity, inclusion, and digital citizenship practices” (ISTE, 2018).  For example, digital leaders know how to use the technology for instructional practices and ensure that all students have teachers who can and do actively use technology to meet student learning needs in an authentic and engaging manner, providing personalized learning experiences that are relevant and engaging to students (ISTE, 2018; USDOE, 2017).  Digital leaders model digital citizenship by participating in the responsible use of social media, by using technology to promote positive social change, and by cultivating environments that promote safe and ethical use of technology (ISTE, 2018). 

As Visionary Planners, digital leaders “engage others in establishing a vision, strategic plan and ongoing evaluation cycle for transforming learning with technology” and act as Systems Designers who “build teams and systems to implement, sustain and continually improve the use of technology to support learning” (ISTE, 2018).  Digital leaders promote a shared vision to improve student success through the use of technology (ISTE, 2018).  They work collaboratively to ensure strategic and equitable use of resources to improve learning through the use of technology (ISTE, 2018).  Digital leaders establish systems and infrastructure, enforce data privacy, and establish partnerships to support their strategic vision for transforming learning (ISTE, 2018).

As Empowering Leaders, digital leaders “create a culture where teachers and learners are empowered to use technology in innovative ways to enrich teaching and learning” (ISTE, 2018).   They model how to inspire innovation and collaboration and model how to promote professional agency and build capacity and self-efficacy within their learners (ISTE, 2018).  Digital leaders use technology to advance the learning of their teachers and therefore the students.  Digital leaders model how to use technology to actionably evaluate or assess learners’ progress in real-time (ISTE, 2018). 

As Connected Learners, digital leaders “model and promote continuous professional learning for themselves and others” (ISTE, 2018).  Digital leaders are current in educational technology, learning pedagogy, and participate in professional learning networks (ISTE, 2018).  Digital leaders use technology to model reflective practices and a project a mindset that supports creating opportunities to grow personally and professionally (ISTE, 2018).

The digital leader consistently uses technology to model digital citizenship, collaboration, and professional learning throughout their daily work (Isin & Rupert, 2015; ISTE, 2018).  Teachers who experience the modeling of 21^st Century Skills are more likely to incorporate those experiences into their classrooms.  Through professional development, digital leaders create opportunities to model the adaptation of changing technologies and planning innovative lessons based on pedagogy (Shepherd & Taylor, 2019).  Administrators who embrace their role as digital leaders provide teachers opportunities to grow professionally and increase teachers’ understanding of the ISTE Standards and 21^st Century Skills. (Shepherd & Taylor, 2019).  If you are an educational leader, take the Digital Leadership Challenge.  Embrace your role as a digital leader by modeling the ISTE standards and 21^st Century Skills during your next professional presentation. 

Are you up to the Digital Leadership Challenge?

First, challenge yourself to explore unfamiliar digital tools to use as a platform for your next presentation.  Depending on your familiarity with technology, the tools can be as simple as utilizing Google Slides, Nearpod or an add-on such as Pear Deck.  An online search for presentation tools will provide you with a multitude of options and platforms to consider.  For example, Laura Spencer’s online article provides reviews of over 20 presentation software alternatives to PowerPoint such as Google Slides, Keynote, Prezi, Powtoon, and Slidedog (Spencer, 2019).  Within this article, suggestions for choosing the right presentation tool include determining whether the presentation should be collaborative, should allow for mobile editing, be Mac or PC friendly, or allow for online sharing (Spencer, 2019).  Remember to choose a tool that will allow equal access to all of your learners; think about the types of computers, tablets, phones, and software that your learners can access.  Choose a platform that is free or you are certain is available to all users.  As a digital leader, it is up to you to ensure equity and access to technology. 

Second, strategically plan your presentation so that you accomplish the goals of your meeting while modeling innovative ways to enrich teaching and learning.  Use the technology to purposefully create an engaging and interactive presentation that allows the learners to choose their activity.  For example, suppose the purpose of your presentation is to explain the current building initiative which is Cluster 2 from Danielson’s Framework for Teaching – Creating a Safe, Respectful, Supportive, and Challenging Learning Environment (Danielson, 2013).  You can provide multiple options to inform the learners about the initiative such as a YouTube video on Creating an Environment of Respect and Rapport, a paper copy of the Smart Card to explain Cluster 2, time to explore the Danielson Group Website, or possibly a Zoom meeting with an expert from the Danielson Group (Danielson Group, 2019; Phillips, 2011; Spencer, 2019).    

After the learners have chosen and engaged in developing an understanding of the current initiative, then you can bring the learners together to collaborate and synthesize their knowledge.  Using a collaboration tool, such as Padlet, a Google Doc, a Nearpod slide, or within a discussion post on Schoology or Canvas, you can facilitate and create shared resources related to the school initiative.  For our example presentation, ask participants to virtually share their understanding of the initiative and ideas toward creating a safe, respectful, supportive, and challenging learning environment.

For the last part of the Digital Leadership Challenge, ask for honest feedback on your presentation.  Ask your learners whether they felt engaged in the learning process, whether their ideas were valued, and which digitals tools were interesting and useful.  Share links to the digital tools demonstrated throughout your presentation and provide resources to assist your teachers in learning how to integrate technology into their curriculum. 

Embrace your role as a digital leader – purposefully design effective professional learning to support teachers who want to innovate and increase students understanding of both curricular content and 21^st Century Skills.  You are up to the Digital Leadership Challenge; utilize the insights on the content, structure, and strategies presented throughout this AJE five-part series and model instructional practices in alignment with the ISTE Standards.  Lead your learning community into the 21^st Century by encouraging your teachers to become empowered learners, innovative designers, and global collaborators. 

Five-Part Series on Insights for Educational Leaders on Providing Professional Learning on Integrating Technology into Classroom Lessons and Curricula 

Part 1 Educational research confirms that the content of the Professional Learning Sessions should include clarifying “why” integrating technology is important.   

Part 2 Educational research confirms that the professional learning sessions should include content related to understanding the changing role of the classroom teacher, instructional design, and strategies on coping with changing technology.   

Part 3 Educational research is used to show that the professional learning sessions should be structured to focus on content specific to the teacher’s needs, have coherence, allow for sustainability, involve active learning strategies, and allow for collaborative participation.   

Part 4 Incorporates educational research to show that for teachers to learn TPACK, educational leaders should strategically design their Professional Learning Sessions to model the use of digital tools and an evaluation for improvement should also be incorporated.  

Part 5 A challenge for educational leadership to create and model 21^st Century Professional Development. 

Diane H. Zack is currently completing a Certificate in Administration through the Pennsylvania State World Campus and recently earned an Ed.D. from the University of Delaware in Educational Leadership with concentrations in Curriculum, Technology and Higher Education. Diane has worked for years as a public high school math teacher, curriculum writer & coordinator, and as a writer and presenter of teachers’ professional development. Diane is dedicated to providing teachers with professional development to increase students’ opportunities to learn 21st Century Skills.

References

Danielson, Charlette. (2013). Framework for teaching evaluation instrument. Retrieved from https://danielsongroup.org/framework/framework-teaching.

Danielson Group. (2019). Smart card: the framework clusters. Retrieved from https://danielsongroup.org/downloads/framework-clusters-smart-card.

Harvey, J., Holland, H., & Cummins, H.J. (2013) The school principal as leader: Guiding schools to better teaching and learning. Wallace Foundation. Retrieved from www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/the-school-principal-as-leader-guiding-schools-to-better-teaching-and-learning.aspx.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2018). Educational technology standards for education leaders. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-education-leaders.

Isin, E. & Rupert, (2015). Being digital citizens. London, UK: Rowman & Littlefield.

Phillips, Kimberly. (2011, July 23). Creating an environment of respect and rapport. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/44GzGk75vb0. 

Shepherd, A. C., & Taylor, R. T. (2019). An analysis of factors which influence high school administrators’ readiness and confidence to provide digital instructional leadership. International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, 52.

Spencer, Laura. (2019). Over 20 best presentation making software alternatives to powerpoint. Retrieved from https://business.tutsplus.com/articles/best-presentation-software-alternatives-to-powerpoint–cms-28697.

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology (2017). Reimagining the role of technology in education: 2017 National Education Technology Plan update. Retrieved from https://tech.ed.gov/files/2017/01/NETP17.pdf