2/26/17

2/26/17

"Tools for School Leaders"

This chapter in "Leading 21st Century Schools" is ironically timely when looking at the current events at my school.  The chapter talks about tools  school leaders can and should use to communicate with stakeholders.  It addresses PLNs, Websites, Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts and various social media sites.

Currently,  the School Improvement Team (SIT) at my school  is using a program, Indistar, to assess, plan and monitor our School Improvement Plan (SIP).  Indistar provides indicators for the team to look at (assess).  The team then chooses one indicator to develop a plan to evaluate in detail.  The first indicator we chose to address was the indicator E1.06 - The school will regularly communicate with parents/guardians about its expectations of them and the importance of the curriculum of the home (what parents can do at home to support their children's learning). (5182)

As part of the plan, we need to describe how it will look when this objective is being fully met in our school and how we can provide evidence. As part of the process, we will be sending out a questionnaire to the staff requesting the various tools they use to communicate with parents.  The Team is also looking for additional ways for the school to communicate with parents.  Some members have negative feelings about using social media.

This  chapter gave some excellent tools to suggest to the team as well as practical ways to implement the changes.  I particularly liked how one principal describes how she manages and uses the school Facebook page.  She suggests starting "tight"  as in who can post or comment on the page.  She wanted to ensure that the page was not used to express 'unhappiness'.  She also suggest that multiple people have administrative rights including the district office, school secretary, counselor and a few teachers.  That will take the burden off of just one person trying to keep up with it all.  Most important, be positive on the page. Use this page to share  ALL the good things going on in the school.

I plan to share the ideas in this chapter with the team and the principal.  I think it will help him to visualize what would be by looking at the examples and suggestions given in this chapter.

3/5/17

Technology Plan

This past summer, the technology inventory process was revamped.  Previously, each teacher was responsible for completing a inventory form and turning it in before leaving for the summer.  While this was 'complete', there was a concern about validity of the inventory.  This past summer, the school secretary and media specialist went room to room and completed the technology inventory.  As items are replaced or added to a room, the teacher and/or technology specialist is to report it to the secretary.  While there is still room for error, there is a valid inventory to start with.

The district required each school to use the North Carolina Digital Learning Plan and complete a scoring sheet as to the status of the school.  Ours was completed last week by a team consisting of 1 school administrator, 2 support staff and 2 teachers.   Each member completed a scoring sheet on their own and it was complied into one report and turned into the district.

Based on the combined scoring sheet, our school scored a total of 28 (developing).  The lowest categories were leadership and professional learning, with the most '1's in the leadership category.  Four of the six subcategories scored a 1 which supports my previous blog where I indicated that some (principal) are unsure of social media (technology).  This is a great starting point in digging deeper into the technology plan.