by LaDonna Hatfield

Created on: November 22, 2008

Principals have so many responsibilities on their shoulders, and their greatest concern is that students are learning and there is evidence that learning is taking place in the school. While that concern is the primary goal of any school or school system, the myriad of other responsibilities competes for the amount of time that is needed for new technologies to be introduced, teacher competencies developed, and monitoring of student involvement in technology to be the constant primary focus of the typical school principal. What can be done about the situation? Good principals know how to delegate responsibilities, and that is the beginning of opening the world of technology into a school's infrastructure. Principals know which teachers are technologically proficient and which teachers want to be more techno friendly in the classroom. The first piece of advice is to make the best use of that group of teachers. Develop a team of teachers who are familiar with using technology in the classroom, pair those teachers with the teachers who want to engage students with new technology but are not sure where to begin, and give this group TIME.

Time must be provided for this team to develop and hone their schools, share their excitement, help one another with problems, and discover new uses for technology. A technology team that has time to meet for discussions and training sessions becomes the basis of a group of teachers who act as technology troubleshooters within the school. For the team to be a workable group, the teachers involved need time to determine what their goals are for technology use in the school. With this framework in mind, the teachers can begin meeting to learn and share techno ideas with each other. This time is extremely important because teachers who want to use technology must have the time to become familiar and proficient with the technology available in the school. Their confidence in using that technology is important because these teachers become the resource persons for other teachers who see the need for technology but have not taken the plunge into incorporating new devices, software, and web resources in their classes. The more teachers in this team, and the more confidence exhibited by the teachers in this team, the better the resource base for the entire school. The efficacy and efficiency of such a team is valuable not only for the students of those classrooms, but also for the impetus of drawing other teachers into effectively using

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>