Shift Happened April 22, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Opinion.trackback
Stephanie Sandifer, on LeaderTalk and Change Agency, posted a nice article on what to do once the realization has been made that something must change in education in response to the shift in the world around us that has already taken place. She does a nice job of moving the discussion from tools (what to buy) to people. Stephanie identifies everyone on campus, teacher, administrators, etc. as learners, and I agree with the assertion:
If we are serious about changing our learning environments so that our students leave fully prepared for life and work in a globally connected and collaborative environment, then we are definitely going to be moving the cheese of many people in our organizations — it won’t be easy and we can’t wait for all of the state and federal policies and mandates to catch up before we take action.
Stephanie goes on to point out that traditional methods of distributing change in educational systems, such as committees and pilot programs, are just too slow. She calls on the early adopters to virally spread change. While this is effective among the early adopter set, I don’t think this approach will impact those in the later (and larger) adopter groups. Unfortunately, I don’t have a suggestion for a better way to spread change, especially in educational institutions.
Stephanie does a great job of identifying roadblocks, such as tolerance toward technophobic attitudes and sufficient infrastructure. Some of these same elements I’ve written about in the ocassional ‘Necessary Ingredients’ series. On a side note, the post is nicely annotated with helpful links. Link to the article below:
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I do agree that the post by Stephanie Sandifer is just really thought provoking and well worth all school leaders having a read.
This is interesting blog and one that I will keep my eye on from now on. Thanks for posting.
http://blog.garethl.com
Gareth