Empowering EdTech: Building Capacity at Your School Site

Purpose & objective

At the end of the session, participants will have a model for utilizing ISTE resources to be able to identify their site’s instructional technology needs, and establish practices that help to build capacity and empower all stakeholders to be leaders in instructional technology. They will also leave the session having had the opportunity to plan around first steps for plan implementation for their specific school site.

Resources covered include: ISTE’s Essential Conditions, Leadership Look Fors & Ask Abouts, ISTE Standards eBooks. The purpose for this session is to provide a model for utilizing ISTE resources and the ISTE Standards to build capacity at your school site around instructional technology.

Presenters will draw from their experiences in utilizing these tools and practices in their work to build capacity at Samuel Gompers Middle School in South Los Angeles.

Supporting research

Ronfeldt, M., Owens, S., McQueen, K., & Grissom, J. A. (2015). Teacher Collaboration in Instructional Teams and Student Achievement. American Educational Research Journal 52(3)

The findings listed in the article above indicate that the quality of teacher collaboration has a direct (and positive) correlation to student achievement. Additional findings also indicate that educator quality is improved when opportunities for high quality collaboration are implemented. This relates to our presentation, as the success of our work has been dependent upon our ability to create opportunities for educators and leaders to engage in high quality collaboration and in creating systems of support that allow for these practices to take place on a consistent basis.

Mills, A. D. (2016). Strategic school solutions: A capacity building framework for leaders accelerating 21st century teaching and learning (Order No. 10182306). Available from ProQuest Central Student. (1834104919).

This study investigates the methods in which schools can help to accelerate 21st century learning at school sites and the nature in which school leaders should approach this task. This also correlates with, and supports, our presentation topic as the study indicates that collaboration and distributed leadership (directly tied to the two ISTE Standards we discuss) are key factors in successful implementation of 21st century teaching and learning.