Thursday Catch Up

I must confess that I am not a blogger so this is a learning experience for me. I learned to communicate face to face and through phone conversations but the hectic nature of the workplace necessitates this form of asynchronous interaction so I am glad to have the opportunity to begin developing some skills with this medium.

Barry Litun is clearly a people person and enjoys his job. As an educator he is trying to make a difference in Lethbridge 51 in a way consistent with his personality. I believe he is a Transformational Leader and on first impression at least I think he is someone I would like to work for. When I read Leithwood's article on School Leadership I felt the closest affinity to the transformational style. Conversations with other class members confirm that many of us share the same opinion.

It is difficult to lead change without strong observation skills. He observed that IT is here to stay and whether you have a passion for it or not there is a need to find the most effective way to maximize the use of technology. By his own admission his strength was not in coming up with the creative ideas but in recognizing the ideas that could work and finding ways to make them work. An integral part of his approach is trust. Clearly he is a good judge of character and as he pointed out, hiring is an extremely important part of his job. Hire good people, trust and support them, set clear goals and you can accomplish great things.

He recognized that in order to facilitate change it is important to integrate slowly with adequate provision for professional development for staff. Equitable access to technlology is a key component of the implementation strategy as they move towards creating 21st Century classrooms. In all the readings, and in my experience, having a clear vision like this for a school division's mission is key to success. When it comes to the more specific vision needed to achieve some of the operational outcomes he looks to and trusts the talents of members of his team, like the technology leader that we will meet later in the course.

Planning is extremely important for implementation and evergreening of equipment. Teachers and students come to rely on a stable environment and disruption of service leads to lack of trust and ultimately lack of integration. The 'forklift' approach described allows for a standard platform across the divison with a phased in, school by school, approach that will allow for better support and stability. It requires the ability to have long range approach to funding over several years which validates the importance of a long range vision.

Support from administrators and teachers is very important since the technology team is changing the tools in the toolboxes they use everyday. If the administrators are not supportive then the teachers will be resistent. Administrators need to feel a sense of ownership for the project and that requires the technology leader to collaborate with them and make them part of the process. Listening to Barry it sounds like their leader was very effective in this regard.

It was interesting to see and hear validation for many of the points made in the readings relating to the qualities necessary to be an effective leader in general and more specifically, a technology leader.