BFTP: YOYO - staff development for administrators

The issue of the use of technology is 5 percent bits and bytes (a spiffy e-mail system that spans continents), 95 percent psychology and sociology (an organization that dotes on sharing information rather than hoarding it). Tom Peters

All administrators can learn. The Blue Skunk

Learning that a Google Teacher Academy for Administrators was to be held in San Antonio in March (of 21010), got me thinking a little about our district's approach to helping administrators learn about any  technology. I believe our approach can neatly be summed up by the acronym YOYO - You're On Your Own.

Well, perhaps not quite. Our library and technology department just takes a less head-on approach. These strategies consciously developed by our department have seemed to work for most our administrators:

• Setting examples of good communication, planning and record keeping using technology.
• Inviting administrators to all technology staff development activities.
• Providing technical support and individualized training.
• Providing clear teacher and student information literacy and technology competency lists.
• Serving on building leadership teams.
• Serving on district staff development teams.
• Placing administrators on the district library and technology advisory committee.
• Providing reports and updates on technology initiatives and budgets at administrative meetings.
• Helping administrators understand what they need to know.*

There are a number of reasons, I've found, that make "teaching" administrators** about technology challenging:

1. Administrators have people. Having ready access to secretaries, librarians, and technicians, it's pretty easy to pass technology-enabled tasks to one's minions. (I do it myself.) Having the librarian develop the slideshow, the secretary access the finance system, or the technician do any software upgrades is a routine occurrence. One can reasonably argue about how much time we taxpayers want our administrators spending on secretarial or tech tasks anyway.
2. What is commonly taught to teachers has little relevance to administrators' daily work. Our staff development efforts tend to focus on teachers and classrooms. Knowing how to use interactive white boards, the online grade book, or clever Web 2.0 tools to make reports sing and dance will not impact the daily work of your average principal. As "instructional leaders," administrators should know of these tools and how teachers themselves should be using them, but do they need to master them?
3. Administrators have other priorities and other tasks than classroom teachers. Administrative work is just plain different from classroom teacher work. Work drives tech use, not the other way around.
4. Technology as a tool for student problem-solving, communication and creativity may not be in alignment with administrators' personal educational philosophy. Or individual leadership styles for that matter. If the principal is evaluated based on her building's test scores, the most powerful uses of student technology use - creating problem-solvers, communicators and divergent thinkers may not resonate with that administrator. But they may happily glom on to reading or math integrated learning programs or data mining apps. My experience shows that anyone happily adopts technology when it increases the chance of his/her personal goals - people are not resistant to technology, per se, but applications of technology that do not conform with their idea of schooling.
5. Most administrators are middle management, taking directions and priorities from a supervisor themselves. As powerful as some administrators may seem, they take their marching orders from someone else as well - including superintendents who answer to elected school boards who answer to the public. So they have a limited degree of autonomy to set their own goals, practice their own educational philosophies, etc.

As much as I hope the Google Academy for School Administrators was wildly successful, I didn't push it here. Were I betting man, I'd say such workshops have far less impact than on-going, less direct means of building administrative "technology" understandings.

 

* I've been thinking/writing about technology skills for administrators for over ten years. A former superintendent, Eric Bartleson, and I published Technology Literacy for Administrators in School Administrator, Apr 1999 and I updated my Rubrics fo Leadership in 2013. Using one of our own principals a a model, I wrote Improving Administrative Technology Skills, for May 2005's School Administrator.

**  Whether we'd like to acknowledge it or not, all the administrators I know have advanced degrees, an above average intelligence, decent interpersonal skills and leadership capacity. I believe, even if we are not always in agreeement, that our administrators act in the best interest of our students.

Image source: http://www.dilbert.com/

Original post December 29, 2009