School Law Professors & Technology

Since I teach educational leaders, I thought I would participate in Leadership Day 2008, which was started over at Dangerously Irrelevant last year and is happening again this year. Leadership Day 2008 is supposed to focus on ways to help school leaders become more technologically literate so that they can better lead schools in the 21st Century. A few worthy activity, indeed.

So, my post today is going to focus on improving technology literacy in school leadership preparation programs, instead of directly on educational leaders themselves (for lots of posts directly on helping school leaders, see Dangerously Irrelevant where Scott will be doing a summation with lots of links). Leadership preparation programs, at least 90 some percent of them, are very traditionally oriented entities (why I know this). Granted, a few innovative programs are beginning to push the technology envelop seeking greater efficiency, but your traditional brick and mortar leadership preparation programs still dominate, and in those preparation programs technology literacy is not highly valued. It is valued a little, but mostly not enough to arise to any formal efforts to integrate technology literacy elements into the curriculum (again there are exceptions).

So, if our leadership preparation programs are not technologically literate, how can we expect our educational leaders to be? We show them what they should value in their careers during their preparation program and technological literacy is no where near the top of that list. So, how do we integrate more technological literacy into our preparation programs?

Well, here is an idea and what I am going to try to do over the next decade or so.

Technology issues are unlikely to get a privileged class of their own. The best technology can hope for in most programs is an elective, but in today's strictly controlled cohort models of leadership preparation, electives are largely out of favor. So, what class is in every leadership preparation program around the country where more technology can be integrated? ... Well, how about educational law? It's an unlikely place I know and probably not the one you were thinking of, but one where I think real progress can be made.

First, change comes easier to ed. lawyers. Last year, the First Amendment analysis was changed. The year before, teacher speech was entirely changed. Pretty much once a year, a fundamental change occurs in educational law and people that teach educational law thrive in that environment of constant change. We see it as our job to keep up with change.

Second, the Internet plays a bigger role in Ed. Law classes (at least good ones). While a lot of ed. leadership classes involve reading and discussing a book, the education law class necessarily relies on the latest cases, many of which can't be kept up to date in a textbook. My boss updates her textbook every 4 years or so, but it is still wildly out of date by year three. To fill in those gaps, we rely on Internet sources. In most of our educational law classes, we even teach students how to stay up to date with legal research. Also, most good ed. law classes use current events from the Internet. The latest local news story or NPR clip. 

Third, there is already a group of law scholars that recognize this change. It is no surprise that Scott McLeod & Jon Becker, who both run great technology oriented blogs, are both lawyers and are already writing an online law textbook. Throw in myself and people that recognize this change but have less of an Internet presence such as Kevin Brady, and there is a group that is already pushing the envelope.  

Anyway, I could go on, but you start adding this stuff up and I have come to the realization that we can use educational law courses to help school leaders become more technologically literate.

And, I realize I have a large role to play in this. Part of the reason for the Edjurist redesign is so that I can work off a site where I can publish Web 2.0 resources for educational law which can be freely used by school law instructors across the U.S. and world. Because the law is an ever changing entity, familiarity with blogs and other Web 2.0 devices are necessary for more than just personal learning and discussion. That kind of up to date familiarity is necessary to keep your school obeying the law and out of legal trouble. As I have already shown, there are already 15-20 education law blogs out there, many of which are state specific. As that number continues to increase, they should continue to increase their presence in educational law coursework. But, it is more than just blogs too. Vidcasts, forums, online hornbooks, etc. As people like myself begin to build and publicize these tools, we can encourage ed. law instructors across the U.S. to adopt these into their classes. Heck, maybe even some will be as crazy as me and do a YouTube assignment.

There are over 600 preparation programs across the U.S., each with an educational law course at least once a year. Consider if just 1/10 of those courses began to integrate more technology tools and helped train educational leaders in the use and function of those tools? That would be a fairly substantial change, but one I think is very possible within a decade. 

Snippets up in a bit.

Tags: leadershipshipday2008, schooltechleadership

Comments

[Jeanette Johnson]

A great idea - I'm in an EdD cohort program, and you'll see from our course sequence that ed tech is not addressed in its own course (and this, by the way, is a distance ed-driven program!):

http://www.coe.ufl.edu/Leadership/programs/programplans/LEAD%20EDA%20Executive.pdf

We're getting bits of exposure to technology, particularly thanks to one specific, tech savvy professor who worked much of this into his courses... but so far, there has not been any conversation along the lines of one's obligation as a leader to become skilled in these technologies, and to promote them with one's staff. 20+ district and school based leaders in one program together, and the only discussion of technology in education comes when an individual professor chooses to introduce it (and several of ours have actually been somewhat dismissive of technology), or if a student brings it up. A shame, I think.

[Justin B.]

Thanks Jeanette.

Being at Florida, you are in a strong preparation program ... and I know which of your professors is the tech savvy one :). But, when the finest programs in the state are devaluing technology leadership, you know we have a long way to go. But, I am glad the students are bringing it up. Just keep bringing it up - we'll get there.