Category: Orientation Course

ISTE Standard: Digital Citizenship

Learning Goal: To be a leader at my school and within my community around empowering students to use technology and digital resources in responsible ways, and to have open dialogue with colleagues around these ideas, so that they too can have these conversations, with each other,  students, and stakeholders.

Influence: Being a leader in technology and innovation at my school, this standard impacts my work heavily day to day.  Being able to have conversations with fellow colleagues around responsible, yet innovative technology use is important.  But beyond this, being able to work with stakeholders to create a shared vision for digital citizenship and approaching this in a collaborative manner is important.  The term digital citizenship everywhere these days, but really being authentic to our students, community, and context is what will make it impactful for us.

ISTE Standard: Leader

Learning Goal: To promote a shared vision around technology and innovation at ISC, and to promote a culture of learning around technology and innovation with staff and students.

Influence: Our school is currently in an exciting point in time. We are working towards having all staff Google Level 1 Certified, building a new innovation space, taking on new software, and our one to one program is well established. This standard has influenced this goal in that being a leader in technology and innovation is important, but creating a shared vision that all stakeholders buy into is even more powerful. Continuing to refine and improve my technological leadership skills is vital to my role and will allow our school to continue its growth as an innovative international school.

ISTE Standard: Designer

Learning Goal: To promote the increased use of education technology in classrooms, and instil more confidence in staff to take risks in this area by developing, testing, and working side by side with students with edtech.

Influence:  As our school continues to grow and develop in a multitude of areas, it is vital that staff feel they have the skills to develop and the confidence to make mistakes.  Additionally, ensuring we are creating personalized, learner driven experiences allows students to have a voice in the edtech that is being taught and learned at our school.

I am lucky enough to be connected formally in several learning communities as outlined in my graphic.  Through my school, I am connected with our leadership team who encourage each other to read literature, blogs, and social media.  Beyond encouraging each other to engage in learning, we also share back our learning on a bi-weekly basis.  I have also taken this model and used it with my IT/Innovation team, encouraging them to learn and share.  Furthermore, there are also several of us at the school who are regular readers. We share books, and engage in regular dialogue.

Since moving to South America, I have slowly been connecting with other IT Directors in the region.  This has allowed me to create powerful connections and open up conversations around issues that are impacting all of our work. I recently traveled to two of these schools and was able to solidify my connections further.  This past August I traveled to Stanford for a course on Design Thinking.  Upon completion of the course we created a Slack group to stay connected and continue the learning.  Lastly, I use Twitter regularly to stay connected with other professionals in IT/Innovation, and EdTech.