RUNNING HEADER: Visionary Leadership in Technology 1

Visionary Leadership in Technology

Julia Grdich

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Visionary Leadership in Technology

So often we think of leadership in a school as being the principal or assistant principal,

maybe even sometimes facilitators and Deans. How often do we think of the technology leader

in the building? For a long time, I thought of my technology leader as just the person I go to with

all my tech questions or my IT guru, boy was I wrong! A lot of times in schools the technology

leader is the backbone to all technological integration that happens in that building. For this

assignment I interviewed my current technology leader, John. John has been a tech leader for

about six years and for two years he was a math interventionist but always found innovative

ways to incorporate technology into his classroom. I came up with six questions to ask him and

we spent about 45 minutes talking about not only those six questions but a lot of other things as

well.

Summary of Interview

During this interview I asked John six different planned out questions. Lucky for me the

conversation flowed and a lot more than just these six questions was talked about!! I geared these

six questions towards the importance of successfully integrating technology, what challenges

teachers may face, what challenges a district may face with integrating technology, how

technology integration could impact our students in the future and ideas proven to be successful

for integrating technology into the everyday classroom. I started the interview with some basic

questions, asking John how long he had been in this position at the school. He responded with

saying eight years. I found it very interesting that two of those eight years he was a math

interventionist but was the specialist of bringing technology into his classroom during

instruction. Before he ever became the technology leader in this building he proved himself to

not only be knowledgeable about technology but had experience with integrating technology into
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the classroom successfully and not so successfully as well. I also asked John some ways he had

seen technology being integrated into instruction. He talked mainly about the use of google

classroom. This is a way that students can get assignments, complete assignments and even

communicate with their teacher and collaborate with other peers. At this school middle grades

are 1:1 with technology, due to everyone having Chromebook. The elementary is not so lucky,

but we do have 12 mobile laptop carts. This makes it very easy for middle school teachers to use

google classroom because they know every day, every student will have working technology

available. John talked about one example that I thought was astounding. In one of the

elementary classrooms the students are using google classroom to write papers. Once they finish

their first draft they will share it with a peer to peer edit. Then the student will make the

corrections and submit the third draft to the teacher to edit.

As we continued talking about other ways John has seen technology being integrated are

the building, I started thinking why doesn’t everyone do these things? They are so easy and fun!

This led me to my third and fourth questions of "What is the biggest challenge teachers face in

successfully integrating technology into the classroom?" and "What do you see as the significant

challenges impeding educational technology uptake in K-12 education during the next five

years?" John responded with exactly what I had anticipated. He said the biggest challenge for

teachers in not being provided ample time and training to be able to learn the technology for

themselves nor are they given time to plan and collaborate with fellow educators on impactful

ways of integrating this technology. John also mentioned a challenge as having such a large

percentage of students still not having access to the internet outside of school. It is a good

thought to create digital classrooms, however if a student needs to complete something outside of

the classroom and does not have internet that student is going to suffer and not receive the same
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education as a student who does have internet access. Luckily there are things we can do as a

school and as a community to ensure access for all our students!

There were two more questions I wanted to ask John. My fifth question for him was

regarding coding and how coding could impact the futures of our students. I have heard people

talking about coding for years now and never really knew what it was exactly. After talking with

John, the relevance coding has to our student's lives is unmatchable and we would be doing our

students a huge disservice if we did not teach them about coding. Through this interview I

learned that coding is the creating, maintaining, and updating of these games and technologies.

Coding is the now and future and it is our job as educators to prepare our students for the future.

The final question I asked John was about how the new technology standards on the teacher

evaluations aid in the integration of technology into classrooms? The impact of these standards

on technology integration is huge. It has put technology back in the minds of everyone. If the

state did not have these standards for teachers a lot of people would shy away from integrating

technology into their classroom for the simple fact that they don’t know how to use it well

enough, these standards coming back into play helps hold everyone accountable and doesn’t let

anyone shy away because they are unsure.

Relevance to ISTE

Being an effective technology leader in a school or organization shows complete

relevance to the ISTE Administrators standards for visionary Leadership. You see it connect to

so many of the five standards. Standard two talks about creating a digital learning culture. This

standard is all about meeting the needs of your diverse learners through the integrating of

technology and creating ways for our students to work collaboratively in a learner centered

environment.
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Standard 3 of the ISTE Standards for administrators surrounds excellence in professional

practice. John talked about allowing teachers the time to learn the technology and to plan for

ways to incorporate it into their lessons. As administrators we are responsible to promoting an

environment of professional learning and innovation which empowers educators to enhance

student learning. We must provide them with the necessary resources they need to be successful

in what we are asking them to do. If don’t do this then people will give up, integration will be

unsuccessful, and our vision will quickly disappear.

Standard four of the ISTE standards for administrators deals with systematic

improvement. This involves being the model technology user in your school and hiring

knowledgeable personal that can help train and coach your staff on the effective use of

technology in the classroom. Also keeping track of student and staff achievement by collecting

data. This part is huge because you can hire great staff, you can find the best programs but if you

are not keeping data you don’t know if it is working or not. If you are getting results it is not

EFFECTIVE technology integration!

Value of Interview

This interview was extremely valuable to me for many reasons. One was because it really

opened my eyes to the important role a technology leader plays throughout a school building. As

a future administrator whose goal is to successful integrate technology into the everyday lives of

the teachers, parents and students in my building, I am going to have to rely heavily on my

technology leader. This interview really got my mind rolling with so many ideas and ways I

would love to see technology incorporated into my school one day. Another huge thing I took

away from this interview is what I should look for in a future technology leader. As an

administrator I am going to be faced with potentially hiring people to fill positions in a school
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building. A technology leader is so much more than just your go to problem solver. They

should be knowledgeable to most technology, the state technology standards, the importance of

integrating technology and should be coming up with new ways to bring technology successfully

into the building and classrooms. There is a very big difference between an IT specialist and a

Technology Leader. Lastly, I learned a lot about coding and robotics during this interview.

These are two topics that are becoming more and more relevant to our lives and our students by

the day. It is important to think into the future of what our students will need to know besides

the state standards and educate our students to the fullest, so they have every opportunity to be

successful in the future. It is incredible the impact we can have on student achievement by

integrating technology.

References

Figure 2f from: Irimia R, Gottschling M (2016) Taxonomic revision of Rochefortia Sw.

(Ehretiaceae, Boraginales). Biodiversity Data Journal 4: E7720.
https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.4.e7720. (2015). North Carolina Digital Learning Plan,1-98.
doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f

Rondio, E. (1992). NMC results on structure functions. AIP Conference Proceedings, 1-49.
http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2016-nmc-cosn-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf doi:10.1063/1.43529
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Appendix

1. How long have you been a technology leader?

For about 8 years. Some of those years came before I was an instructional technology facilitator
and was only a math interventionist. However, during that time I was seen as someone who
would find ways to incorporate technology into my lessons.

2. How is technology used of collaborative learning at your school?

Students use tools such as learning management systems (Google Classroom and Edmodo, for
example) to communicate not only with their teacher but also with their peers to complete group
activities and review each other work. An example of this is with one of our elementary ELA
classes that write papers using the Google platform. As students finish their first rough draft,
they would share it with at least one peer who will proofread and add comments and critiques on
how to improve their paper.

3. What is the biggest challenge teachers face in successfully integrating technology into
their classroom and how can the challenge be overcome?

One of the biggest challenges I see with teachers successfully integrating technology in the
classroom is having the time to plan for and play around with a technology tool or resource and
the lack of continual development in using technology in the classroom. It is important for
teachers to understanding that one must plan technology around their lesson, which means they
must understand how and if it can apply to what their goal is for a lesson. This requires planning
time and access to resources that can help guide on using the technology. The way to overcome
this challenge is to ensure that teachers know that they have someone they can go to that can plan
and guide them through integrating technology and have ongoing training that involve
technology leaders in the school that can share their resources and how they use it in the
classroom. This will also give confidence to teachers to make attempts at integrating technology
into their classroom without the fear of failure or the unknown.

4. What do you see as the significant challenges impeding educational technology uptake in
K-12 education during the next five years?

One of the areas I feel is an issue when it comes to education technology is closing the digital
divide that exist that can hinder access for students. When I say digital divide, I speak to the
issue of student who do not have the technology or Internet access at home. As education pushes
to use more digital resource and tools, students may be required to work at home and those
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students that lack access this becomes an issue. (Had to revisits a report). According to Charlotte
Digital Inclusion Project, approximately 19% of residents in Charlotte lack internet access at
home and could reach up to 40% in some areas. Within our community, places like the Charlotte
library and Sprint are assisting with these issues by allowing families to check out/rent hotspots
that can be used at home, as well many schools (like ours) providing programs like 1:1 to
provide students with a device they can use at home and school. It is important to realize that
education technology cannot be effective if students do not have access to the technology to take
advantage of the resources. As long as there is a digital divide that exist, there will be students
that will get short changed.

5. How important is it for elementary students to learn to code and why?

Consider the world we live in now and how many digital apps, programs, machines, and
other technologies that we use now and think about 10 – 20 years from now. We are rapidly
utilizing technology for many of our daily task that can increase over the years and it will require
understanding coding to create, maintain, and update these technologies. Teaching students how
to code now will prepare them for a future that looks at knowing how to code as important as
being able to speak a language.

Outside of knowing code itself, learning how to code can build skills that students will need
to know as they grow and prepare for the future. Skills such as critical thinking, collaboration,
creativity, and perseverance.

6. Describe the impact of the new technology standards for teachers on the effective
integration of technology.
These standards play a huge role. Now teachers are being assessed on how well they
incorporate technology into the classroom. They can no longer shy away from using technology
because they are unfamiliar or unsure about it. These new standards are holding everyone
accountable to the eceptation of creating collabortive, digital, 21st century learning
enviornemnets.