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