PLN's and Next Steps - Assignment #5

The main points that I took away from the three readings are the same points I have taken away from this class. The 7 habits article focused on providing opportunities for collaboration amongst your staff as well as collaborating and learning about things in your own capacity. In the 21^st century principals article, it was discussed that a huge downfall of leaders is not using and learning the technology themselves. If you are rolling out new technology to the staff, you need to be an expert on it and you need to be at the trainings with your staff, showing them that you truly believe this is what the school needs. Leadership through modeling is vital to the success of technology in a school. The article also discusses making decisions about what types of technology to purchase without consulting the staff. Just like in any decision making process within your school, you need to consult the stakeholders who will be effected by this decision; and, in the case of technology, your staff is hugely impacted.

As a building leader, I would really like to form some type of group of teachers who take new technology and new apps into their classrooms then share out with a small group what worked and what didn’t and what they would change. This PLN could serve as an advisory board for the school as far as what technology they are finding is useful, etc. Creating and maintaining a connected and successful PLN both for myself and for my staff is imperative to the success of my school. Teachers need time to collaborate and they need that time built into their day for them. Teachers time is precious and, as a leader, you need to be conscious of this and make sure that their time is used fully. As for principals, time is always an issue but it is important to prioritize taking some time for yourself throughout the day. Currently, I devote 10 minutes of my morning to read the news, check on blogs, and just feel connected to today's issues. This is a practice that I hope to continue to complete as I grow in my career.

I have set goals for myself to use three new things in my classroom this year. These are also my first steps as a teacher to connecting with more technology. As a leader, I think that these steps also set me on the path to modeling that I am comfortable and interested in the use of technology in a school.

1. Blogger: I am planning to start a classroom blog where I can update assignments, notes, worksheets and reminders for the week. I will update this blog once a week, on Wednesday or Thursday. If I find that I like this and it is easy, I will integrate this tool into my leadership activities when possible.
2. Twitter: Through the article from Learning First Alliance, I can see how useful twitter can be to connect with students. I know that through my internship, I will be gone a lot and I think if I encouraged students to tweet out questions on days that I am gone I will be more connected with my students. I will create a twitter specifically for my work as a teacher and encourage students to follow the account and tweet using a specific hashtag that I will connect to the blog. I really do trust my students to be appropriate but I will definitely have to develop classroom procedures for twitter and blog use.
3. Padlet.com: Padlet is an amazing tool in my opinion. I really think that this could be used in class and as an administrator. I would love to see this used during presentations as a way to collect questions, aha moments and other comments during meetings or whole staff presentations. Especially during all staff meetings, a lot of questions can hold up the presentation and make it feel choppy. However, having people wait until the end can cause them to forget or not want to ask any their question any more to save time. Padlet allows people to ask the questions and the presenter can choose when to interact with the questions.

Teachers are naturally curious and have a deep love of learning. The trick, as an administrator is firing up this curiosity and connecting it to technology. I truly believe that if you give teachers a chance to choose what technology tools they want to use and time to learn them you will create buy in and excitement about technology. Part b of standard 3 talks about not just facilitating but participating in PLN’s that connect both you and your staff to new technology. If I was a new leader in a building and people expressed an interest in technology, the most important thing you can do is support those people and let them bring the staff up to their level. Excitement for new technology is key, but making sure that teachers feel supported and feel like they have time to truly learn the technology is just as important.

Overall, through distributed leadership, modeling best practices and working with your staff instead of above your staff you can create an environment within your building that approaches technology positively. In my current role, there are things that I want to take on as a classroom teacher and there are ideas that I want to save for when I am a building principal. There are some ideas that I can start to use through my internship as well, but I truly feel that to grow my capacity to be a digital leader, I need to grow my own technological abilities within my classroom first.