Today is the sixth anniver­sary of Scott McLeod’s blog Dan­ger­ously Irrel­e­vant as well as Lead­er­ship Day. Scott chal­lenges read­ers to blog about any­thing related to effec­tive school tech­nol­ogy lead­er­ship in what­ever for­mat they choose.  My post is an open let­ter to school lead­ers across the country.

Dear School Administrator,

I’m writ­ing this let­ter to encour­age you to rethink the ways that tech­nol­ogy is used in your school as well as in your own pro­fes­sional life.  Although this let­ter may be crit­i­cal at times, its intent is to help pro­vide poten­tial alter­na­tive views to the cur­rent sta­tus of tech­nol­ogy in our schools.  This let­ter addresses two major con­cerns related to tech­nol­ogy and school lead­er­ship.  The first con­cern is focused on the ways that tech­nol­ogy is used, or not used, in our schools.  The sec­ond is related to how you (school lead­ers) are using tech­nol­ogy for your own per­sonal learn­ing.  As we move into the 2012–2012 school year, the time to change is now!

For too long, our school sys­tems have approached tech­nol­ogy with a cul­ture of fear.  This cul­ture of fear has been mag­ni­fied by the media’s extremely neg­a­tive cov­er­age of tech­nol­ogy.  I real­ize that as a school leader one of your most impor­tant jobs is the safety of your stu­dents.  How­ever, in your quest to keep stu­dents safe and pro­tect them, you have dras­ti­cally over­re­acted.  You have blocked web­sites, at times exten­sively, and restricted stu­dents from bring­ing their own tech­nol­ogy into your schools.  You have pro­hib­ited stu­dents, as well as teach­ers, from embrac­ing social media.  I am strongly encour­ag­ing you to rethink these poli­cies!  You do need to keep stu­dents safe, but you should do that in a rea­son­able way.  Each year you make count­less deci­sions about the safety of stu­dents.  You weigh the con­cerns ver­sus the ben­e­fits of activ­i­ties.  I encour­age you to do the same with tech­nol­ogy.  One exam­ple is the stu­dent trips you take each year.  Some of those are sim­ply day trips to busi­nesses or muse­ums, but oth­ers are overnight trips to Wash­ing­ton D.C. or a long dis­tance band trip.  When you send stu­dents out­side of your school, you real­ize that they may not be as safe as if they remained in the school building.

How­ever, you weigh those safety con­cerns against the amaz­ing learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and life expe­ri­ences your stu­dents will have on the trip.

Your deci­sion to send stu­dents on those trips is based on the fact that their risks are still min­i­mal because you have put appro­pri­ate pre­cau­tions in place.  Please begin to use that same rea­son­ing when con­sid­er­ing how tech­nol­ogy is used in our schools.

As school lead­ers, you have wisely warned stu­dents about the harm that can come from post­ing inap­pro­pri­ate mate­ri­als on the web. Unfor­tu­nately, that warn­ing has often trans­formed into a mes­sage to not post any­thing online.  Many schools have taken the approach that if stu­dent con­tent can be found on the web, that is a hor­ri­ble thing.  I strongly encour­age you to change that approach.  We need to begin to encour­age our stu­dents to cre­ate a pos­i­tive dig­i­tal foot­print!  The amaz­ing work that they cre­ate should be shared with the world.  Although we have many great teach­ers, stu­dents want an audi­ence out­side of their class­room teacher.  As an employer, my first screen­ing of any can­di­date was a google search.  If I can’t find some­one on google, I’m bewildered!

I won­der what in the world have they been doing with their life, and why can’t I find  any pos­i­tive things about them online.

Finally, school admin­is­tra­tors, I really want you to con­sider the ways in which you use tech­nol­ogy.  I know that you are extremely busy.  As the for­mer prin­ci­pal of a school with over 900 stu­dents and no assis­tant prin­ci­pal, I can empathize with you!  There were days that I was so busy I didn’t know which way to turn!  With that in mind, I’m plead­ing with you to use tech­nol­ogy for two rea­sons.  First, tech­nol­ogy can make your life eas­ier.  Tech­nol­ogy can allow you to com­mu­ni­cate, col­lab­o­rate, col­lect and ana­lyze data along with a host of other things much more effi­ciently and effec­tively.  The final rea­son I encour­age you to use tech­nol­ogy is that it allows you to develop pro­fes­sional net­works with oth­ers and gather infor­ma­tion effec­tively.  I often get push back from you when I ask you to use twit­ter or an RSS feed to help increase your knowl­edge of what is hap­pen­ing in edu­ca­tion.  The com­mon response is “I don’t have time”.  I often nod my head politely and lis­ten, but want to scream in dis­gust.  As a school leader today, is it really an option to ignore what is hap­pen­ing because of lack of time?  How would you react if other pro­fes­sion­als took the same approach?  Is it accept­able for a phar­ma­cist to fail to stay cur­rent with new research because he/she doesn’t have time?

I close with one last plea.  Tech­nol­ogy by itself is not enough.  Please invest in train­ing your teach­ers and devel­op­ing poli­cies that focus on stu­dent learn­ing!  Never before in his­tory have we been so informed about what works in edu­ca­tion.  The tech­nol­ogy has also given us tools that make the impos­si­ble imag­in­able.  You are serv­ing at a very excit­ing time in edu­ca­tion.  For the sake of our stu­dents and our future, please do not ignore how tech­nol­ogy is impact­ing nearly every sec­tor out­side of edu­ca­tion.  Please use tech­nol­ogy as that lever to truly change learning.

Yours in education,

Nick Sauers