Jul 27 2008
K12Online 2007 Reflection on Patrick Ledesma’s Presentation
The K12Online 2007 presentation by Patrick Ledesma is titled The Technology Specialist as Teacher Leader: Strategies to Ensure Successful Technology Integration and Student Learning in Schools.
Wow, this was a solid, step by step presentation of how to have a successful experience integrating technology into your school. Patrick has a well organized presentation which begins by suggesting that we first seek to understand ourselves and our schools. Make sure you know what role or roles you play in your setting and know also what your strengths and weaknesses are. The three main roles he mentions are repair person, helper/assistant to teachers and an instructional leader. It is his suggestion that most of your time should be in the instructional area. In order to spend more time as an instructional leader/collaborator it is a good idea to “manage your environment”. To do this you should have a system in place to prioritize repairs and also teach teachers how to do simple troubleshooting. I liked his idea of setting essential goals and dream goals for the year (or a shorter amount of time). Last year my goal was to introduce an online web service called Weebly to the staff and show interested teachers how to create and maintain their own web pages. I liked it because it gave them a way to interact with their students and parents, and I did not have to maintain the page for them. All I needed was their link so I could put that on the school website.
He also had good suggestions for collaborating with staff. Another idea he presented which makes good sense to me is that we shouldn’t sell technology to teachers, but we should sell them on the impact technology can have on their teaching and student achievement. Another idea I took from the presentation was the importance of creating models of you teacher collaborations and build on them from year to year. You should also use them for collaboration with other teachers, show them at staff meetings and host them on the server for others to see. I think this would be a useful presentation to share with your principal and other people in your district who are involved in promoting technology integration.
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