The University of Lethbridge

Topic of the Day: What is Educational Technology and How Does it Relates to the Change Literature?

Issue of the Day: The Leader's Dilemna

Activity for the Day: Internet Searching

The Leader's Dilemna:

On one hand, failing to act when the environment around you is radically chaging leads to extinction. On the other hand, making quick decisions under conditions of mind-racing mania can be equally fatal. (Fullan, 2001, p. ix)

Welcome to ED5850, Leadership and Technology. This course will introduce you to issues related to leading in a culture of change.

Educational leaders need to manage and plan for the use of technology in educational settings. Rapid changes in both technology and education make this a complex task. This course will assist educational leaders to develop a theoretical as well as a practical knowledge base in the use, management and futures of technology in teaching and learning.

This first module will get you started looking at online materials. I want you to start to explore various aspects of technology and critically think about how they impact the leading process.

Thoughts, ramblings and critical questions

Since you enrolled in this course, I am going to assume that you have some interest in technology and leadership, or technology or leadership. There are many, many issues associated with leading a learning organization through the integration of technology into teaching and learning (as any change process). Some of these challenges might include, but are not limited to, the following:

Varying levels of technology fluency for teacher educators
Layering (different proficiency levels of teachers)
Barriers (Lack of time, Lack of tech support on hand, Lack of vision—Institutions need to define what they mean by infusion, Lack of incentive—Is there a lack of incentives or a lack of prioritizing? It is important to identify who decides how the school operates. If teachers have a voice, they need to use that voice to provide incentives for technology infusion.
In technology, so many changes occur so fast that it is easy to become overwhelmed.
Risk takers are important/essential for success.
Technology infusion must be aligned with curriculum.
Change in pedagogy goes along with the adoption of technology. Pedagogy must be less teacher-centered and have more two-way communication and collaboration.
Information is not instruction.
A "laundry list" of skills is not a valid test of integration.

What do these challenges mean to you? What does it mean to lead? and How can one best lead for technology integration? For a beginning task, I want you to begin to explore one or more of these 'challenges' by searching the Net for related articles.

In this course you will be asked to be a critical consumer of information. Be sure to use a 'critical stance' when reading and acquiring information on the Net. Be aware of what site you are accessing. Locating credible information on the Net can sometimes be difficult. As you search, be attentive. Be aware of the fact that some sites (although they appear good) don't even state the author, or the date created, or when the material was updated. These are all significant details for online materials. Keep in mind that there is no review process for web materials. ANYONE can publish a website. Learning media literacy is a critical skill for students today because they need to be discriminating users of web-based materials. Obviously online journals have more credibility. However, the varying qualities of journals also exists.

Glossary and Resources for the Week (in this section I will give you comments and references to help you complete the tasks for the module.)

Organizing bookmarks (Favorites in Explorer) are a great way to collect sites that are relevant for teaching. If you are searching for a topic, bookmark any sites that you want to use at a future time. For our purpose this week, you may want to bookmark the sites that you find.

Deleting Bookmarks

Click Bookmarks and choose Edit Bookmarks. (On Mac OS, open the Communicator menu and choose Bookmarks). Click to select a bookmark, and press the Delete key. Click OK.

Keeping Multiple Bookmark Lists

Probably one of the most valuable things you can do with the bookmarks is keep multiple lists. For example you can have a list for each of the units you are teaching. You can have more than one bookmark list, each with its own set of titles linked to favorite pages. Only one bookmark list can be active at a time.

To Save your Bookmarks to a file (To save a bookmark list:)

1.Click Bookmarks and choose Edit Bookmarks. (On Mac OS, open the Communicator menu and choose Bookmarks). 2.Open the File menu and choose Save As. The list is saved as an HTML-formatted file.

To open and use a bookmark list:

1.Click Bookmarks and choose Edit Bookmarks. (On Mac OS, open the Communicator menu and choose Bookmarks). 2.Open the File menu and choose Open Bookmarks File. The file you open determines what you see in the Bookmarks menu.

Sites to help you work with Bookmarks:

Organizing Bookmarks in Netscape (great site...worth the visit)

For Netscape 6 or higher: (on a pc) working with bookmarks (includes images)

How to work with bookmarks

Using Bookmarks in Netscape

Using Favorites

Selected Readings: (typically I will give you more online resources but this week I wanted to only provide a couple. I want you to do the exploring!)

Mendez-Morse, S. (1998). Leadership characteristics that facilitate change. Available online:
http://www.sedl.org/change/leadership/welcome.html

McKenzie, J. (2000). Making good change happen. Available online:
http://www.fno.org/jun00/goodchange.html

Module Activities: (things you must do for this module :-)

Purchase course textbook: Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a Culture of Change. Jossey-Boss. (available at U of L bookstore or can be ordered through Chapters)
Write and send an introductory email to the class listserv. If you have a picture please add it to your email message. It's nice to 'see' who we are 'talking' to... ;-)
Start thinking about Leadership and Technology. Use the above list of challenges for leading and technology. Identify an area that intrigues you most about leading in a culture of change. Conduct an Internet search. Locate 5 resources (save them as bookmarks or favorites) related to one of the challenges listed above (or you may have an area that you might like to explore already). Email Acitivity One: email me a message which includes the list of five sites (Internet Address and Title) and your response to ONE of the resources that you have selected. Please see the E-mail Contribution part of the assignments page for an outline of what is expected for your response.
Email Activity One is due by the beginning of the next module (Sept 11).
In the subject line of your email always include include an appropriate subject line that includes the course name and activity. For example for this activity include: 5850, email activity one.

An example of what I would like to see (not actual sites):

Site 1: Leading in a Culture of Change (http://www.bigbook.ca)

Site 2: The Leadership Challenge: Finding Ways to Lead Change (http://leading.ca)

Site 3: Infusing Technology into the Curriculum: Challenges and Rewards (http://doingit.ca)

etc., etc.

Then include your response to one of the articles.

ENJOY!!

Created by Lorraine Beaudin, PhD

University of Lethbridge, 2003