by Diane Rose

Educators who have participated in the College’s school technology leadership program are serving as ambassadors to school districts across the nation and shaping the future of technology throughout the K–12 system. Joan Hughes, associate professor of curriculum and instruction, and Scott McLeod, assistant professor of educational policy and administration, created the graduate certificate program in 2002 to help address the “critical national shortage” of administrators who can effectively facilitate technology implementation in schools.

Institutions in the K–12 system have historically lagged other sectors in adopting new management and educational technologies. Tight funding, generational differences, and administrators too short on time to learn new systems all get some of the blame for this gap. A lack of technology in the schools can have critical long-term impact on students, who don’t always have access in their homes. This so-called digital divide can prevent success in postsecondary education and in employment.

To date about 20 educators have completed the school technology leadership certificate. Jennette Kane, technology integration supervisor for the Orange City Schools in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, is among the College’s school technology leadership graduates. She spent a week on the Twin Cities campus and completed the rest of her coursework online.

“I brought back a lot of resources to help us with data-driven decision making,” Kane says of her certificate studies. As a result, she is working with building administrators to gather information about student achievement, such as which instructional strategies may be most effective for gifted or special education students, or whether there is a correlation between attendance, achievement, and demographics. “Our ultimate goal is to be able to use the reported data from the state and our own data and reporting sources to inform our instructional practices and improve achievement scores,” she adds.

She always keeps her focus on how technology can enhance learning, Kane explains. Through the certificate, she also learned about law and policy as related to technology use, and gathered resources and ideas on how to design a school district technology plan. Her efforts to apply this knowledge have been rewarded. Last fall, the National School Boards Association named Kane one of “20 to Watch” who will help shape education technology for the next 20 years. Her long-term goal is to oversee her school district’s technology department, which serves 2,300 pre-K–12 students in addition to adult learners.

By and large, certificate co-creators Hughes and McLeod say K–12 administrators have not been effective leaders in the adoption of technology, and many schools operate much as they did 50 years ago. “We adults are abdicating our roles to work with [youth] to use the tools appropriately,” comments McLeod, winner of a 2007 Cable’s Leaders in Learning Award, “to teach information literacy, media literacy, and how to apply their technology skills to be an architect or a physicist [for example].”

Kane, whose district offers several technology-integration academies for its teachers and administrators, says, “I do wish that technology integration was included in professional development requirements; right now, it’s voluntary. I think K–12 technology adoption is very uneven. In Ohio, we have a strong state agency that has provided funding, and we’re also in a relatively wealthy area. I hope more states start providing the support the schools need.”

The first graduate certificate of its kind, the College’s school technology leadership program has been the model for programs at 15 other colleges and universities nationwide.