School administrators, in order to be leaders in technology, most definitely need to be up to date in the latest technologies and their application for the classroom. Scott McLeod, on his blog Dangerously Irrelevent posts an interesting question for Leadership Day 2009: What is a technology tool that would be extremely useful for a busy administrator (i.e., one he or she probably isn’t using now)?
My first thought: The RSS Feed.
Perhaps if we can first get administrators reading about great technology, we can then inspire them to try it and encourage application uses in the classroom. So read on- leaders! Read-on!
My first thought: The RSS Feed.
No- it isn't new, but I'm always amazed how at how many people have never heard of an RSS feed, let alone know how to use one. Many administrators don't have time. Well- they might not have time to search for valuable information, but they could probably find time to read it if someone provided it for them. So let's help them out! We "techies" already know the great blogs and tweets out there to subscribe to- lets put all the feeds together into a simple RSS, go to Mr. Principal's computer, set up Google Reader on their system and plug in the feed.
I suggest using some of the RSS tools, like FeedMingle, or YahooPipes to condense the feeds into one. Edu-techies can create a "District 15 Administrator's Feed" whereby all principals/admins would only need to subscribe to the one feed (and it can easily be edited by the creator). No time to read on a computer? You could use an RSS to PDF program like FiveFilters to print out an "Admin Newsletter" of the most relevent blog feeds available.Perhaps if we can first get administrators reading about great technology, we can then inspire them to try it and encourage application uses in the classroom. So read on- leaders! Read-on!
