PLU 168: Week 4: Digital Reputation and Tech-Leading

      There you are...Scrolling through your twitter, facebook, or instagram feed. As you scroll, you categorize the people you follow into different categories: the encouragers, the depressers, the braggers, the inspirers, the travelers, etc. So, what kind of online behaviors do you exhibit? What content do you post about?
      This article prompted me to really think about my own digital reputation, and how I encourage a positive digital relationship with my 3-5 students.  The article gives great tips, especially for secondary education, on how to change students' mindsets about what they post to create purposeful, positive posts, pictures, tweets, or videos. The same ideas can be tweaked for elementary students and still accomplish the same mindset shift toward posting content that is purposeful and powerful.
     It's easy to look at these ideas and plan to implement them (if you're a teacher) or encourage teachers to implement them (if you're an administrator or coach), but what else needs to accompany the ideas to make sure they are successful?

• Teacher Knowledge- Teachers must be savvy enough with social media/digital tools in order to present, model, or facilitate lessons that utilize them.
• Rubric- used to assess the digital project and communicate your project expectations to the students. 
• Rubric resources: 
• Rubistar- create customized and free rubrics
• Teach-nology- library of pre-formatted rubrics for content areas
• Roobrix- great tool for scoring rubrics accurately

Access to Technology- student devices (Bring Your Own Device) or school provided devices

Collaboration- Administrators must encourage classroom climates that embrace and encourage collaboration and rich discussion. It would also help if the school had already branded itself using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, etc. 

 

What stands out about tech-leading educators, building administrators, or superintendents? An iPad air, eye-catching iPad cover and coordinating stylus, and an iPhone 6+? Actually, what truly separates tech-leaders from the rest of the pack is not what they possess, but how to propel themselves and followers toward innovating thinking, digital perseverance, and meaningful learning for students.  Karen Cator describes key attributes of successful tech-leading superintendents in this article from The Journal. 

•  Life-long learning- BE CURIOUS and share your curiosity with other superintendents, employees, and school board members. Stay connected through social media to broaden your thinking of what IS possible and keep your ideas from becoming dated. 
• Visionary-Think about what is possible and share it clearly so everyone knows what the target is. 
• Goal-Oriented- An overall vision is needed to create a target. How the target will be reached comes from setting short and long-term goals for an organization. Know where your schools/district currently is so you can determine how to reach your target.
• Collaborative- Don't sit on an island and wait for ideas to float ashore. Problem solve, build a raft, and set out to find solutions! Make intentional contact with people or businesses that can support the schools'/district's efforts. Model this collaboration to other stakeholders to create an environment where walls or traditional hierarchy systems don't prohibit solutions to be found.
• Innovative- Try new things, and don't stop when it does or doesn't work! Highlight teachers that are implementing new, creative ideas in their rooms, and support them! Function under the understanding that not every idea will work, but taking risks and learning from them creates a community where success isn't measured by the individual trials, but the overall advancement of the district. 

Final thought...Using the information above, how leading questions would a tech-leading superintendent have if given the scenario below?