While I started out at Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Internet – I left that session after about 10 minutes. It was a little too simple but did make the points that with all the browsers that are out now, you might consider going to the help feature frequently to check for add-ons or new features to make your browsing more efficient and effective.
In this session, there was a lot of audience give-and-take about how their school promotes the use of technology. Suggestions for productive classroom observations, teacher leaders conducting workshops, short presentations in faculty meetings.
Presenter says the administrator should use technology in a manner that is appropriate to their role as an example. E-mail doesn’t count. That is no longer cutting edge! Build your toolbox with Blogs, Twitter, various collaboration document creation tools, RSS readers/feeds, and portable or mobile devices for observations and data collection.
Administrators should think of uses/needs and then have IT support them, rather than IT present a product and ask admin to use it.
Technology can be used by administrators to:
Promote Shared Vision – using blogs, wikis or any other media to display and communicate the PLN vision.
Establish Distributed Leadership – Collaboration sites for shared documents
Facilitate Conversations – Twitter, short emails,
What can administrators do to model appropriate use of technology?
Provide a model training room for teachers to use risk-free.
Admin only training sessions at the district level.
Ensure enough technical support for the buildings.