Cross posted on Cre­ative Ten­sion.

We know that prac­tices change when teaches, stu­dents and admin­is­tra­tors have ubiq­ui­tous access to tech­nol­ogy on a daily basis. In the class­room, teach­ers and stu­dents have to explore dif­fer­ent strate­gies for teach­ing and learn­ing. In the admin­is­tra­tive offices, school lead­ers should, “pro­mote and model effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion among stake­hold­ers using digital-age tools.” (From ISTE’s NETS-Administrators). These changes don’t hap­pen overnight because it can be dif­fi­cult to develop new skills and knowl­edge and to change habits. What does the school leader who sud­denly finds him/herself in a 1:1 envi­ron­ment do? In what ways do they change their prac­tices to effec­tively lever­age these new tools? 

Let’s look at the fol­low­ing sce­nario: The prin­ci­pal and/or admin­is­tra­tive team mem­bers are in charge of facil­i­tat­ing a plan­ning session(s) with com­mu­nity stake­hold­ers and all mem­bers of the group have access to a wide vari­ety of resources and tech­no­log­i­cal tools. 

It’s very likely that the sticky notes and chart paper will not be needed for this meeting. 

Let’s begin with Jeff Utecht’s four ques­tions that Nick men­tioned in his post enti­tled, “I’ve got to think of a new job title.” 

1. Is the tech­nol­ogy being used “Just because it’s there”?
2. Is the tech­nol­ogy allow­ing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?
3. Is the tech­nol­ogy allow­ing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways?
4. Is the tech­nol­ogy cre­at­ing new and dif­fer­ent learn­ing expe­ri­ences for the students?

These ques­tions can cer­tainly be used by the leader to guide his/her plan­ning. It seems to be a real chal­lenge to develop a plan­ning ses­sion that will cre­ate a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence for the participants.

Some of the pos­si­bil­i­ties include:

• Using the tools to cut down on the face to face meet­ing time. Only meet in per­son when it’s really necessary.
• Using soft­ware to orga­nize thoughts and ideas into visu­ally stim­u­lat­ing dig­i­tal images. 
• Pro­vid­ing the group with a wide vari­ety of online resources that they can review any­time, anywhere.
• Encour­age the par­tic­i­pants to seek out related infor­ma­tion and resources through­out the session.
• Start the dis­cus­sion off with a blog post for peo­ple to com­ment on.
• Com­mu­ni­cate key con­cepts and ideas with stim­u­lat­ing visu­als instead of the tra­di­tional bul­let points.

I’d love to hear how school lead­ers are chang­ing their prac­tices to cap­i­tal­ize on this new envi­ron­ment. How are you “cre­at­ing new and dif­fer­ent learn­ing experiences”?