Sunday, May 4, 2014

A Discussion Board Sampler from Leadership in Technology

In Thoughts on Creating an Online Course I described my experiences designing ED 6270 Leadership in Technology as an online course.  While I am
trying to allow students to move at their own pace through the major assignments, we will be interacting together on a weekly basis via forums at our Blackboard "Discussion Board".  Through the week, students are required to post, comments on others' posts, and respond to comments.

I am sharing a sampling below because I thought you might be interested.  I also thought my astute leaders might have topic suggestions.  Here we go!

The Horizon Report

Annually,  New Media Consortium issues a Horizon" report on K-12 education. 
"The NMC Horizon Project charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning, and research, creative inquiry. Launched in 2002, it epitomizes the mission of the NMC to help educators and thought leaders across the world build upon the innovation happening at their institutions by providing them with expert research and analysis."
The next report will be revealed at the ISTE Conference at the end of June. Too bad.  Fortunately the "old" one is still very relevant and interesting.  You may download it here.
I highly recommend that you look through the whole document.  For this discussion, read the "Significant Challenges" on pp. 9-10.   Identify one challenge that particularly resonates with you and elaborate in your initial post.
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Our Update on "School Technology Leadership: An Empirical Investigation"

This is the most challenging and "scholarly" forum.  I will take my own medicine and offer and initial post, so pleased respond to mine as well
School Technology Leadership: An Empirical Investigation is a rare piece of research that bears directly on technology leadership.  (If any of you are aiming for a doctorate in the field, your opportunities are wide open).
I would demand that you read the whole article, except since it was conducted in 2003, the study seems out of date.  Instead, read the Indicators section pp. 14 - 18 and scan the rest.
I would like you to imagine that we were going to duplicate this study in 2014 using new indicators for determining "Technology Leadership" and "Technology Outcomes".  I think we all would agree that if an administrator uses email, this is not a sign of tech leadership today.  By the same token, if a student writes a paper using a computer, this would not be an indicator that a school was kicking butt technology-wise.
At this discussion board, I would like each of us to begin the conversation by proposing at leaset one measurable indicator that we would use to assess either "Technology Leadership" or "Technology Outcomes".  Explain your selection and we can comments on each others suggestions.
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What are the implications of Henry Jenkins on Participatory Culture on your role as an educator, your school's curriculum and educational leadership?



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