Part One | Chapters Three and Four | "Leading 21st Century Schools"

Part I of Leading 21st Century Schools: Harnessing Technology Engagement and Achievement consists of the first four chapters and is focused on leading 21st century schools. This post provides insights and reflection from chapters three and four. 

“The more we connect, the more we learn” 

image credit: http://bit.ly/1GZpjaB

Chapter 3 of Leading 21^st Century Schools focused on ways school leaders could use technology for professional development and to enhance communication and collaboration with teachers, parents, and other administrators. In order to gain and share knowledge, the text suggests developing a personal learning network (PLN) to share ideas with other instructors, locate free resources for students, crowd surf for answers to problems, and to keep up-to-date with education news. PLN's can generate a lot of information at one time, so it is important to develop a plan for interacting with your PLN at the same time your are developing it. For more information on building a PLN check out this presentation Lori Reed and I gave at the NC Library Association conference in 2013. 

Schrum and Levin suggest communicating with teachers and parents through websites, blogs, podcasts, social media, and wikis. One of the best things in this chapter is a list of possible blog topics for administrators to share with their constituents. Some of these ideas include keeping a log of the things you are learning as a school leader, showcasing student artwork and creative writing, and posting links to books or articles to encourage conversation (55). At this point in time, it would be difficult to find an administrator who has not heard of these tools listed above -- it is what to do with them that still presents room for education.

Chapter 4 looked at legal, safety, ethical, and curricular considerations for school leaders. Many of the topics discussed did not pertain to me in higher education, so I chose to focus this post on those that are useful to me. Table 4.1 offers fair use of educational materials. As a librarian and educational technologist, I get a number of questions pertaining to fair use so this table may be a useful tool. Here are additional websites to check out on fair use: Purdue University Libraries and Stanford University Libraries.  Another useful piece from this chapter is a chart that helps a student with digital literacy, in this case how to recognize an advocacy webpage. The questions contained in this chart will be useful for creating an information literacy LibGuide on evaluating websites.