Course Reflection

When I first saw the title of this course, Instructional Leadership, I envisioned a course which dealt with the role of the principal as an instructional leader in the school and thought that it would deal with the implementation of best practices and the development of an instructional “vision” for the school through day to day relationships with staff, teacher assessments, community relations, budgetary concerns and possibly the recruitment of new teachers. In essence, I expected it to be very similar in content to the Instructional Leadership Development course that I had recently completed. Once I had read the syllabus, however, and looked at the other course materials, I realized that this course would handle a completely different area – instructional technology and the importance of this in administrator preparation these days. In short, the outcomes I had envisioned for the course did not align with the actual course because this was a different area of instructional leadership than I had expected and as a result, the outcomes I envisioned were completely different to the ones outlined in the course syllabus. Having said that, it is important to note that the true outcomes of the course cover an important and innovatory area of education that is developing daily, and as such it is very forward-thinking of the course professors to provide such a unique experience. Many of the required readings stress the importance of teacher education courses keeping abreast of new developments; in the same way it is important that courses which prepare administrators also move with the times and prepare their students to be successful in the real educational world in which they will eventually work, especially if they are to remain relevant and meet the changing needs to today’s students.

It is important for all educational administrators to understand the importance of technology, technological applications and web 2.0 tools in today’s schools since these are the tools of the future. The course covered many important aspects of this subject that are often overlooked or not stressed enough in the classroom, such as cyber ethics and internet safety. Some of these are “new” problems that are developing as we begin to use technology more and more, such as the need to educate students about the dangers lurking out there on the internet and the need for a common sense approach to this sort of activity; others are old problems in new packages, for example, cyber ethics; behaving ethically with the work of others has always been a part of education, but the ease of access to information on the internet has created a whole new set of dilemmas. If an administrator is to lead by example, it is important that they have worked with web 2.0 tools and experienced the problems that all teachers experience when they first begin to work with technology, and are confident to demonstrate what they know. This course provided the sort of hands-on experience necessary to develop these skills and to begin to explore areas that we may have shied away from in the past. For this reason, all outcomes are relevant to the work that we all currently do in schools and also to the work we aspire to do in the future. I believe that we all teach to help students to achieve more than they believe they can achieve, so anything that increases student achievement (such as understanding the needs of digital learners and learning new skills to meet these needs) has to be relevant to what we are trying to achieve.

I believe that I achieved all the outcomes of the course and successfully completed all the required assignments. This does not mean to say that I found them all equally easy to achieve, or that I was equally as successful in all of them, but the important thing was that I had the experience of learning, and of being a learner as this helps you see the problems from all perspectives. I think, as teachers and administrators, the thing that prevents us from achieving many objectives with technology is fear of the unknown and fear that we will lose control over the situation because, by its very nature, technology can be so unpredictable. Learning to handle this uncertainty and unpredictability is the key to appearing confident with technology and achieving everything that we want to, and need to, in this area. Some of the assignments on this course filled me with dread and fear because they were in unknown territories, such as blogging, for example. However, part of the measure of my success is that I was able to overcome these fears and achieve what was required of me to fulfill the requirements of the course.
The most important thing I learned from this course is that it is important for us all to be able to view the world from the student’s perspective. Technology is important in the lives of all our students and this is an area that we have often overlooked; but to be successful we must be flexible and adapt with the needs of our students and meet them where they can be most successful. Blogging is a large part of our future and it has many positive aspects; it gives all students a voice and encourages them to explore the world around them. From a teacher’s perspective, my biggest worry about blogs is that they may put students in a dangerous situation if they do not understand the dangers that are out there for the unwary. For this reason, educating students about internet safety should be top of the priority list as we embark on this new era in education.

Blogging opens the airwaves for discussion and creates channels for communication with school stakeholders that were hitherto unheard of. In the past, only the confident, educated parents had a voice in the school, but opening up a blog for school stakeholders could encourage the less confident parents to become involved since it is often easier to write what you are thinking than it is to ask in a face-to-face meeting. At the same time, it allows everybody to have a say even if they work strange hours and would not normally be available for school meetings. For this reason, blogging is an important communication tool in the education world because it opens the doors of the school to all people 24 hours a day.