Emerging Issues
I've been asked to identify issues in today's digital learning and leading environment. Also to analyze the implication for leadership in an identified context. Here is a post I submitted to our discussion board about matching objectives to digital resources. We have good strong leaders at my work who are focused on keeping our students "Future Ready" when it comes to education and technology.
1. In what ways can an organization match objectives to the appropriate digital resources? What can digital resources add to this process? How can we ensure the learning objectives are met?
At Klein ISD it’s our job as a district to meet and exceed the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Standards. This starts by creating objectives then using all available digital resources to meet that goal because our district motto is “Future Ready.”
Our district’s technology objective is to increase student and staff productivity across our 44 campuses. We have spent $51.6 million with the majority going toward infrastructure. The technology expenditure per pupil is an eye-popping $1,000 dollars. With this money comes an expectation of using these funds for good. That good can be defined as meeting objectives set by the school, district, or state.
According to our District Strategic Plan 2014-2018, our district goals and our technology goals are aligned.
District Strategic Plan 2014-18 (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.kleinisd.net/users/0087/APR12-13/IP/District%20Strat%20Plan%202014-18%204.3.14.pdf
My favorite line from our Technology Plan is this “we see every education program as a technology opportunity.” It goes on to say that planning and evaluation is included in every technology plan. Our teacher to computer ratio is 1:1 and our student ratio is 3:1 with 1:1 being our goal. We have four main goals outlined in the report and then we set up objectives and strategies to meet those goals.
Digital resources add tremendous opportunity for “failing forward.” If a teacher is trying to facilitate learning and she uses iPads but the student loses attention, then a teacher tried and failed but learned going forward this student has attention issues that need to be addressed. Then the teacher could have an opportunity to use the digital resources to try and fix the problem by buying headphones to block distractions.
One big way our school district ensures learning objectives are met is our MAP program from NWEA. MAP stands for Measures of Academic Progress and this software creates a personalized assessment by adapting to each student. Tests can be taken with laptops or personal devices. Results can be shared across the campus or across the district as an early indicator if student learning and objectives are being met.
Martinez, M. (2015, April 3). 2014 Technology Plan Approval Certificate. Retrieved fromhttps://www.kleinisd.net/users/0001/docs/it.TechPlan.pdf
