District Administration - September 2012 - (Page 78)

cio District GettinG the best roi in technoloGy New Milford High School seniors in New Jersey use iMacs, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop for a graphic arts project. To get the best return on investment, the school ensures that teachers demonstrate how they will effectively integrate technology to create a stimulating environment for helping students to be excited about learning. McClelland, one of four regional leaders in the district and assistant superintendent at Falcon Virtual Academy, a blended onlinephysical school in the Falcon School District 49 in Peyton, Colo. (see sidebar). “It’s not about making money. It’s about allocating money in the right way, where it’s going to help kids the most.” Transforming Culture Schuerman believes that district leaders’ primary goal ought to be improving students’ educational experience. “The reason you do technology is because that’s the way the world is functioning now,” she says. “If you’re equipping people to go out into the world and work, they need to be able to use those tools.” Sheninger couldn’t agree more. “The challenge for schools that have not embraced a teaching and learning culture that incorporates technology is they have a culture that is not relevant to our students,” Sheninger says. At New Milford High, the lone high school within the New Milford School District, administrators have slowly begun to transform the culture over the past three years to accommodate technology better. But Sheninger also agrees with Maslayak that curriculum needs to match technology. “Technology is not a substitute for quality instruction,” he says. “We use technology to support conceptual learning because we want our students to have essential skill sets—communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, global awareness and technological efficiency—that employers will want to see.” To accommodate the potential for interactive group learning that technology provides, New Milford teachers provide 10 minutes of direct instruction and then set their students loose on a project—for example, creating a magazine after a quick lesson in such software as Photoshop and InDesign. “We’re moving away from desks and rows and providing more collaborative seating arrangements,” Sheninger says. Hudson Falls (N.Y.) Central School District hasn’t quite reached the point of changing the classroom’s structure, but Greg Partch, director of education technology, remains hopeful that’s coming. “Teachers are still used to a 14th-century model of instruction where they’re standing up in front of kids and lecturing,” he says. “The hard work is changing the classroom model. There are pockets of excellence and pockets that are not so excellent.” Online Learning If used to its full potential, Maslayak says, online learning can provide students the opportunity to learn at their own pace, in their own way, removing the classroom from the equation entirely, or at least to a large extent. “You can put kids on grade level in math, reading and language arts and not worry about having them be in a classroom of 25 or 30 kids with varying ability levels,” he explains. “Kids who would rather work at night can do so. … Teachers can allow kids to advance, or give them more time to do the work if they need it. They can meet 100 percent of the students 100 percent of the time.” Maslayak says that requires administrators to dispense with traditional scheduling, which some resist, and for state policies or teachers union contracts that have instructional time parameters to be relaxed. “The demands on administrators of the future, who are looking at what technology brings are such that you’re going to be bold, you’re going to be courageous and you’re going to be flexible,” he says. “My biggest concern is with administrators who may not have the courage to effect that kind of change and teachers who may have to look beyond their contracts.” 78 September 2012 District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - September 2012

District Administration - September/October 2012
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Curriculum Update
Inside the Law
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Product Focus
Resistance to High-Stakes Testing Spreads
Postgraduation for Special Needs Students
Rick & Becky DuFour
CIo News
Getting the Best ROI in Technology
Shaping a Digital Decade
Professional Opinion
Professional Opinion
Online Edge
Going Mobile
New Products
New Directions

District Administration - September 2012