Whole school development,change and leadership - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 114

Leadership, technology and change: the challenges facing teachers/practitioners

Leaders need to ensure there is a shared vision for the use of technologies to sup-
port learning and that barriers to appropriate use are recognized (see Chapter 9).
There is considerable literature on planning for school development. Hargreaves
and Hopkins (1991) provide an introductory text to those unfamiliar with how to
engage whole staff in planning school development. The vision should address the
use of technology for

• administration,accountabilityandmonitoring
• communicationwithinandbeyondtheschool
• pedagogy
• thedeploymentanddevelopmentofhumanandmaterialresources.

Choice of appropriate technology tools is a key role of school management. It
is easy to spend money on developing and implementing tools for administration,
accountability and monitoring. There is potential to collect endless amounts of
data - but to what end? Any data collected need to be for a clear purpose and to be
used.
Table 6.1 summarizes advice to school leaders about the characteristics of effec-
tive technology-based tools and digital resources used to support administration,
accountability and monitoring from the research undertaken by Leask and Preston
(2010). The information in the table provides a management tool for checking that
investments meet the standards defined by leading teachers.

Table 6.1 Characteristics of effective technology-based tools which support curriculum

administration, accountability and monitoring

Characteristic Tools should:

· support formative assessment and improving learning rather than focusing
on summative outcomes: i.e. the technology should support the processes
of learning rather than just recording the outcomes of learning
· not just focus on target-led approaches and measurable outcomes. Subject
specific assessment tools should not be abstract but should include
applications to the real world.
· enable more generalized thinking and higher-order skills development
· ensure exchange of data with a variety of devices by:
-

Pedagogical
characteristics

linking with e-portfolios - enabling teachers to easily record and
monitor learners' progress: for example, in recording evidence for
the areas of achievement enabling learners to upload e-portfolio
material

- linking with PDAs which are used for recording learner progress data:

e.g. observation data

- providing hyperlinks between assessment evidence and grades

- dealing with digital data: for example, videos