Activity 8: Teaching and learning at the school

Learning Area Vision

To promote context in which learning accepts 21st Century change, which includes integrating ICT in Education.

ICT integration will make teaching and learning a true authentic-contextual student-centred learning experience.

With this new way, teaching and learning can take place both within and outside of the classroom, through the use of ICT tools. 

Therefore, what I would like to see is that ICT is implemented in the Teacher Education Department to empower teachers and students to move from basic ICT skills to the successful integration of ICT tools and resources in lessons.

Activity 7: The importance of vision and the clarifying role of a leader

Role of the leader

The following ideas extracted from the articles are what my school's leadership will need for the process of ICT integration.

Why Vision Matters by Robert Knowling

·        Merging Vision and Values is an essential strategic action for leadership in any organization. However, defining your vision (the expression of what your company wants to be) and articulating your values (the principles governing how you operate) are not easy or painless.

·        The first step in visioning is to assess your organization, your industry, and your sector of the economy.

·        Vision and values helps employees understand what's important in the business. It tells us not just what, but also how and why we are expected to deliver.

·        Whereas it is important for the leader to have commitment of the organization's time, money, people, or training, where the leader’s job is to allocate resources, and to do that effectively the leader has to listen, recognize, and celebrate success.

·        In addition, the leader must know that Human Resource is to be optimized as a result there is a humane way to deal with people even when you have to deliver tough news or deal with people who don’t share the same views.

·        Also, the leader must understand that the culture determines how people work together and how they respond to change. No leader can succeed without understanding and shaping the norms at work.

·        Finally, in all the principles the leader has to first know the change process starts with you -- how you run your meetings, manage your calendar, share information.

The Art of Chaordic Leadership by Dee Hock

·        The chaord: any self-organizing, self-governing, adaptive, nonlinear, complex organism, organization, community or system, whether physical, biological or social, the behavior of which harmoniously blends characteristics of both chaos and order. It can be thought of as an organization that harmoniously blends characteristics of competition and cooperation; or from the perspective of education, an organization that seamlessly blends theoretical and experiential learning. 

·        In this way the Leader presumes follower. Follower presumes choice.

·        Therefore, a clear, constructive purpose and compelling ethical principles evoked from and shared by all participants should be the essence of every relationship in every institution.

·        A vital question is how to insure that those who lead are constructive, ethical, open, and honest. The answer is to follow those who behave in that manner.

·        True leaders are those who epitomize the general sense of the community -- who symbolize, legitimize and strengthen behavior in accordance with the sense of the community -- who enable its shared purpose, values and beliefs to emerge and be transmitted. A true leader's behavior is induced by the behavior of every individual choosing where to be led.

·        Therefore a true leader must first manage self: one's own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words, and acts. It is a complex, unending, incredibly difficult, oft-shunned task. It is the management of self that should occupy 50 percent of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do that, the ethical, moral and spiritual elements of management are inescapable.

·        Leaders can only recognize and modify conditions which prevent it; perceive and articulate a sense of community, a vision of the future, a body of principle to which people can become passionately committed, then encourage and enable them to discover and bring forth the extraordinary capabilities that lie trapped in everyone struggling to get out.

Activity 6: Models and stages of technology change

It was interesting to see that most persons school were inbetween the adoption and adaptation Professional Development ICT stage.

In addition the main challenges of each school were based on inadequate: resources, connectivity, support and professional development.

In conclusion, most staff members had basic ICT skills, however they need to develop pedagogical ICT skills in order to successfully integrate ICT within their curriculum.