Instructional Leadership Reflections

As I reflect on this course, I must be honest it was not at all what I expected. The title of the course is Instructional Leadership. The vision I had was of learning about how to lead a campus in achieving its instructional goals. While I see how technology is very relevant in that area today, I did not expect to focus so heavily on technology. I enjoyed many of the readings, and can definitely see how, in a perfectly funded system, we could accomplish amazing things and teach kids amazing lessons through technology. The fact of the matter is that technology is expensive and many districts either don't have the funds or are unwilling to part with them. I am simply not sure how practical or real-world the material learned in this course will be to the average administrator. Many of the things in this course put me in mind of things learned while earning a teaching degree. You listen with all ears and it all sounds ideal, in practice, however, it does not go as taught.

I can honestly say I learned a lot about technology I did not know before. This knowledge will carry over into my current job as a campus technology coordinator. I am considering using some of the knowledge gained to lessen the amount of face to face meetings I hold. Using technology such as wikis and discussion boards would go a long way to help reduce the amount of time my teachers must spend in face to face staff development. The huge focus on technology in this course will definitely benefit my work as a technology administrator. It was an unexpected benefit for this course, but a needed one.

The outcomes I did not achieve stem from my expectation that a class called Instructional Leadership would have more content than solely technology. I would have liked to see more reading and lecture on the topic of improving instruction in schools. While I realize, instruction needs to be done technologically more often than not, I still think there are huge problems with instruction these days. I think our teachers are teaching to the middle (because they are forced to) and those who are on a higher level get left in the dust. I would like to see some case studies on schools that have achieved great outcomes with gifted and high level students. I believe that the total focus on technology to improve instruction left a gap in the area of Instructional Leadership.

I have been successful on these assignments thus far, despite staying confused on many of them. The assignments in this course were tedious and, in many cases, not valuable to my current assignment. The expectations for the assignments in this course were not clearly written in many cases. This was a frustration echoed by many of my online colleagues. I received decent grades on all of my assignments, but most of the time I spent on them was trying to make sure I understood the purpose of the assignment. I believe that the expectations of the assignments need to be clarified and made as relevant as possible. The assignments took me a long time to complete and the course happened to fall at a bad time during the holidays.

One of the things I did learn about myself during this course was how little I know about recent technology. I have heard of and, in most cases, experienced all of the things spoken about during this course. Due to my placement in a small, rural school district, I have not had the opportunity to see many of these current things being practiced. I did enjoy learning about them and would love to see how I can implement them, at least in a small way, on my campus. I certainly like the ideas presented in many of the articles and would love the opportunity to test drive some of the newer technologies.

Blogging is one of those technologies I knew about, but had never explored in great detail. I have always enjoyed writing and one would assume blogging would be something I would gravitate toward. However, I think I had the opinion that blogging was something the kids were doing these days and really wasn't something adults (who aren't in the entertainment industry) do. I see the impact that blogging could have in connecting educators all over the globe. It could be a great idea sharing forum. I can also see the benefit of blogging to communicate with all involved in school activities.

I think my concern about blogging would be the liberty some educators would take with the concept and the damage it could have on schools. I realize it is up to schools to teach proper blogging etiquette and have policies and procedures in place for any blogs that take place on the school's website. However, I know from working in education almost ten years that some educators would take the opportunity to have a blog as a license to gripe and take jabs at the school. I do believe this could be nipped in the bud rather quickly, but I do find it to be a concern.

Despite my concern of misuse, I do believe blogging to be a great communication tool with school stakeholders. Every parent would love to know as much as possible about what is going on in their child's school. Blogging would give parents a "fly on the wall" vision into their child's classroom and school. If teachers were able to post daily blogs on the happenings in their classroom, parents would be able to have meaningful conversations with their children when they got home. If principals posted blogs about school events and news items, parents would feel more informed and be able to stay in the loop even if they are not able to be there for all events. I would love to see blogging used in many capacities at our school.