Wednesday, July 4, 2007 is American Independence Day and is as good a day as any to celebrate independent (and hopefully innovative) thinking and leadership. I hereby invite all edubloggers to blog about effective school technology leadership next Wednesday.
As I think about leadership and technology in my building/district, I must agree with McLeod's assertion that to many, many administrators, technology seems to be an add-on. It doesn't seem to be a part of their training nor is technology an integral tool for many of them.
How might I as the librarian facilitate a change--even a small one--in the culture that has grown up in my building as a result?
McLeod asks what is one tool that might be particularly helpful to administrators in my world. My answer: RSS! It's what makes so many Web2.0 tools possible--and relevant! His assertion in today's blog entry that tech training for administrators must be job embedded and authentic makes RSS the perfect basic tool. Information that you choose because it's pertinent to your life comes to you when it's created! What more could we ask!
I plan to introduce my teachers/admin to some basic uses of RSS in the next school year--for blogs and podcasts, primarily. If educators are exposed to the power of collegial relationships made possible--almost effortless, in fact--by RSS, and they're exposed to some of the vast pool of expertise at their fingertips, perhaps a few more converts will be created! :)
3 comments:
You might like this, "RSS in plain English"
Let me know what you think.
I do like that! There's a series of those videos by the CommonCraft Show--the one on wikis provides a good explanation of that too.
I've talked with my district librarian about using "RSS in plain English"
with the rest of our district's librarians for professional development. It's easy to understand and I'm hoping it will make the idea of RSS a little less scary than it might sound otherwise! When we get that experience, we'll head on to my building teachers, who will probably not all be as easy an audience! :)
...a step at a time...
I really do think that RSS is a major key to creating one's own "professional learning community" though, and since my district is going down that path wholeheartedly next year, I think the time is ripe to introduce these 2.0 tools. I know from personal experience that creating my own plc through blogs and podcasts has been a much more effective learning tool than having the district assign me something to learn! Many times with librarians, what the district thinks we need to learn and what we really could use in our professional lives are two different things. Admin. doesn't always seem to know what to do with us...
You are right - RSS is the first step. I would never have taken the time to learn about the new tools available if my curiosity hadn't been piqued by the blogs I was reading in my feed.
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