CIC-0609_Roundtable_v4 4/17/09 1:35 PM Page 4
WHAT IS
LEADERSHIP
Educators and learning experts discuss technology and
leadership in today’s schools. Edited by Ellen Ullman
PARTICIPANTS
DONALD L. BOWDEN has served as the principal of Canajoharie
High School in New York for more than 20 years. In June 2008, he
was honored in Washington, D.C., as Principal of the Year by Time
Warner Cable. He also has been recognized as one of the top princi-
pals in New York State by the School Administrators Association of
New York State and the Capital Area School Development Associa-
tion of New York. Bowden is the chairperson of the Hamilton-
Fulton-Montgomery County Principals’ Leadership Committee and serves on the
Foundation Board of Trustees for Fulton-Montgomery Community College.
CHRISTOPHER CORALLO is director of staff development for
Henrico County Schools in Richmond, VA. He has been an
educator for 30 years, working as a teacher, principal, and
assistant superintendent for instruction. Formerly, he was a
program director with the Virginia Department of Education
and served as Virginia state director for the Appalachian
Educational Laboratory.
KATHLEEN FULTON is Director, Reinventing Schools for the
21st Century at the National Commission on Teaching and Amer-
ica’s Future (NCTAF). She is the principal investigator for Teach-
ers Learning in Networked Communities (TLINC) and is project
director for Knowledge Synthesis on STEM Teaching in Profes-
sional Learning Communities and the Georgia State University
Induction Project: Cross Career Learning Communities. Before join-
ing NCTAF, Fulton was project director for the Congressional Web-based Educa-
tion Commission, associate director of the Center for Learning and Educational
Technology at the University of Maryland, and a policy analyst for the U.S.
Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.
STEVEN SÁNCHEZ taught for 23 years. He currently works for
Las Cruces (NM) Public Schools as the associate superintendent
for instruction and as an analyst for the New Mexico Legisla-
ture’s Senate Education Committee. Sánchez has served on many
boards, including Cable in the Classroom’s National Education
Advisory Board. In January 2004, he retired from his positions
as the acting assistant superintendent for learning services, the
director for curriculum, instruction, and learning technologies, and the state tech-
nology director for the New Mexico Department of Education.
4 :: CABLE IN THE CLASSROOM :: JUNE 2009
MODERATOR: Let’s start by defining leadership.
DONALD BOWDEN: At the building level, I see
leadership as being a facilitator of the success of stu-
dents and teachers. And I think that it’s incumbent upon
the school leader to not only point the way, but also
to assess where people want to go and help them get
there.
CHRISTOPHER CORALLO: I like what Donald
said, because I also believe that leadership is about
facilitation.
But I think the real key—where we are now in
education and from my perspective as a professional-
development coordinator—is that school leaders, whether
they are teachers or principals, need to facilitate reflec-
tive practice. Not only by the faculty that they serve in
that school, but also by students. To me that’s become
the essence of leadership in our society. It is using
data, thinking about what that means, and reflecting
on what we’ve done to get those results.
BOWDEN: I agree 100 percent. And I also think it’s
incumbent upon the leader to recognize people who
are delivering instructions who want to be the scouts,
who want to take the next step, and want to react to
that data. By empowering them, we can bring every-
one else along.
KATHLEEN FULTON: Leadership is a much flat-
ter concept now. We’re looking for leaders who can sup-
port teams of teachers, teams of teachers and students,
teams of staff, and teams that engage the parents. That’s
the idea of learning communities, where the leader sets
the vision of how we’re all going to work together. It’s
not just “my class” or “your class”—it’s our kids. It’s
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CIC-0609_Roundtable_v4 4/17/09 2:12 PM
about creating time and opportunities for teach-
ers to collaborate around that vision.
CORALLO: I’m afraid that we’re talking about
the ideal in leadership. You are going to find
teachers who may need more support. Being a
facilitator isn’t always going to work; you need
to be a little more directive. But ideally, even with
those who need direct instruction—teachers or
students—the ideal is that we should be mov-
ing them along a trajectory to where they are
becoming reflective of their practice and have the
tools to be able to be successful in the school
environment.
STEVEN SÁNCHEZ: I agree with that. And
part of that comes from how the effective leader
in the school becomes an expert at facilitating
a differentiated professional-development model.
One of the things we’ve seen in the past is
everybody goes into the barn and does what
everybody does. But as we look at the literature
and at what we know to be effective, how can
we differentiate those learning opportunities
for our teachers to help transform some of that
practice?
THE IMPORTANCE OF TECHNOLOGY
MODERATOR: What about technology lead-
ership? Does it mean different things at differ-
ent schools?
CORALLO: I’ve got a passion for this that
comes from what we’ve done in our one-to-one
[laptop] initiative. We focused on things and put
equipment and software in people’s hands. I be-
lieve the focus in technology leadership is not
so much the things, but what you do with the
things and how well the things can support
teaching and learning. And how well you can view
these things to create a different, broader, wider,
more open teaching environment and teacher
experience for the students.
I think real technology leadership isn’t just
about knowing which technology to purchase, but
to know what to do with that technology to
truly support and enhance and enrich teaching
and learning for every student.
One of the things we’ve learned is that you can
put a lot of technology in people’s hands and you
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Page 5
‘Technology is adapted well in schools where the
principal has set an example for how technology
can be used in innovative ways.’
can teach them every new application, but if it
isn’t targeted for how that application is going
to create a learning experience that’s better than
what you could do without the technology or how
it’s going to create a richer learning experience,
then why are you doing it?
FULTON: Part of technology leadership is
being understanding of teachers who are un-
comfortable with technology, helping them con-
nect with other teachers so that they can learn
from each other. One of the things technology
does is bring us all down to the same level.
There’s a role for a leader to say, “Hey, you know,
we’re all learning in this. It’s okay to not know
and we’re all discovering together.” The leader
should always think about where the technology
can make a difference and where it might get in
the way.
BOWDEN: I agree that creating collaborative
groups is really important. And I know that one
of the jobs of a tech leader is not only to make
sure that technology is available, because whether
it’s a cart or a horse, both have to be present.
If you have the equipment available, the sec-
ond thing is to be able to find people who have
a native skill at these things, have them apply
the overall concepts, and allow them to assume
a leadership role in this very specific area.
Very often what we do is create individual
teachers who, for a period of time, will act as the
leader of our technology organization. They will
provide instruction to teachers who have been
given equipment and don’t know how to use it.
We give them some break in terms of their work-
day, some forms of compensation to allow them
to have the time to work with teachers. And
then as someone else has displayed some skill
in another area of technology, then that person
would be available to work individually with his
colleagues or her colleagues. We found that to
be very effective.
—Christopher Corallo
SÁNCHEZ: I think where I’ve seen technol-
ogy used most appropriately and wonderfully to
benefit kids is when the technology has actually
designed new practice.
Here is a good example. Last summer we used
the Tabula Digita video game [DimensionM] as part
of our summer school experience. These kids
were doing very poorly in math. Historically, kids
would come in and do worksheets—more of the
same kinds of things that hadn’t worked for
them. We turned them loose on this video game.
I was walking around the classroom one day and
one of the kids wouldn’t go out for his break. He
asked if I could help him with a concept with
fractions. We had a very nice conversation about
addition and fractions so he could go back to his
game and advance. He had the need to know.
It was a very powerful message to me that the
technology had created something. It wasn’t
a lesson that he had to just listen to and not
connect with. He made the connection and went
to somebody to get help. That was pretty
phenomenal.
CORALLO: We have found that technology is
adapted well in schools where the principal has
set an example for how technology can be used
in innovative ways to do different things or to
do things more easily.
WHAT ABOUT 21ST-CENTURY SKILLS?
MODERATOR: I’m sure you have seen the re-
cent backlash about 21st-century skills. People
are saying they distract from learning the basics.
What are your thoughts on that?
BOWDEN: There’s an absolute need for us to
place more technology into students’ hands and
to give them more guidance about how to use
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WHAT IS LEADERSHIP? (Continued from page 5)
‘There is so much available if we allow kids to be
flexible in the way they approach their learning.’
it. Their workplace is not going to be like the
workplace of the 1950s or ‘60s or even the ‘90s.
Their workplace is going to be intimately con-
nected not only to computers, but also to a
whole range of other high-tech communication
and work devices.
CORALLO: I’ve been reading about the back-
lash and watching the blogs, and I think what
Don said is true. Are 21st-century skills differ-
ent from what we wanted children to do in the
20th century? The difference I see is what Don
said—we have a broader work environment, a
world at our disposal, because of technology. So
when you look at such 21st-century skills as
critical thinking, collaboration, or communica-
tion—aren’t those skills that schools should have
always been teaching? I would say most people
would say yes, we have been trying to do that.
How do we use technology to communicate,
to collaborate, and to think critically? It’s a lot
of the same skills, but the technology helps us
bring it out into a different world.
The other thing that I see with the 21st-
century skills is, while we have been teaching crit-
ical thinking and communications for many years,
I think the idea that we need to teach the basic
skills through those modes might be a little dif-
ferent in the 21st-century-skills framework. Teach
all the basic concepts in the core areas, but
teach them from a different lens, where students
have to solve problems and think critically. I don’t
see it as being different; it’s just a twist based
on what our world is like today.
FULTON: At one point, 21st-century skills
were a new idea and got a lot of attention. Now
everybody has heard of them and the new twist
is that people are asking, “Well, why do we need
that?” But I can’t believe people don’t understand,
as Chris said so articulately, that this is the same
stuff, but in a new context.
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—Steven Sánchez
Where the leadership comes in perhaps is in
being able to show folks who might not under-
stand how 21st-century skills are connected with
the core-content standards that you’re working
toward. That is one of the nice things the Part-
nership for 21st Century Skills has done through
its connections with the content folks, such as
the National Council of Teachers of English, which
has a very nice piece showing where 21st-
century skills fit in with teaching English.
Once we have examples, people don’t have as
much trouble understanding it.
TECHNOLOGY IS ALL AROUND US
MODERATOR: Now I’d like to hear about
examples of great uses of technology in
schools. What sorts of things have you seen in
your travels?
CORALLO: I think the technology that is free
and accessible to everyone can really make a dif-
ference in the classroom. We use all of the Google
products, particularly Google Docs. We use other
things as well, like Skype for videoconferencing.
BOWDEN: I think one of the most underuti-
lized aspects of technology is the ability to com-
municate through e-mail. A teacher can create
a group e-mail to maintain contact with all the
students, disseminate assignments or guidelines,
or respond to questions. A teacher can create
groups with parents, and parents can maintain
constant feedback about how a child is doing in
every one of his classes. None of this is difficult
to do. We’re working hard to get teachers and
parents to use e-mail as a vehicle to maintain
communication between home and school.
SÁNCHEZ: Our alternative high school had to
be reformed under No Child Left Behind, and one
of the instructional innovations we put in was a
third/third/third, or triad, model. One third is
technology based, one third is a seminar com-
ponent (usually an online class) that builds on
what the kids are doing in their technology com-
ponent, and the other third is a project-based
environment in which kids apply the skills or con-
tent they’re learning in the online course and talk-
ing about in their seminar. We’re finding that the
kids are starting to use Skype to participate in
the seminar when they’re not in school. It has
forced us to think about what it really means to
be in school. These 190 kids who kind of pop in
and pop out are very, very interested in staying
in touch and using the technology to facilitate
what they need to do.
It’s only a year old, but it’s paid off quite
nicely. Historically, we have had about 19 kids
complete the program in this school. This year
we’re looking at 41 students completing the pro-
gram because they’ve been able, through an
alternative way of schooling, to complete their
course requirements.
There is so much available if we allow kids to
be flexible in the way they approach their learn-
ing to stay engaged and involved.
FULTON: We are looking at how technology
can make teachers’ jobs richer. A good example
is the online community we have that supports
new teachers with a connection from their
teacher-preparation program into their first cou-
ple of years of teaching. It is to help them deal
with what we know is a major problem, that of
new teachers being “thrown in.” Using teacher
networks for support will hopefully have a real
impact on making new teachers comfortable and
effective more quickly, and less likely to leave.
It’s important that we think about how the
technologies can support the teachers too.
CORALLO: That’s such a good point. We have
been using blogs,websites, and video to connect
our 3,500 teachers into the district network.
When we wanted to change our professional-
growth-and-evaluation model, we connected to
all of the teachers by broadcasting the meetings
and creating a blog where they could comment
so the committee could see what the teachers
were saying. We made videotapes of important
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CIC-0609_Roundtable_v4 4/17/09 8:56 AM
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
training materials, put them out there, and
asked teachers to comment. We were able to
open that process by using the type of net-
working you’re talking about.
One of the struggles has been the battle be-
tween access to the world and protecting our
students. E-mail, for example, is a great tool,
but it can create a classroom-management
situation when you have ubiquitous comput-
ing like we do. If you put a laptop in every
kid’s hand and they have access to e-mail,
they’re talking to everybody and their brother.
You open a chat room and they’re in the class-
room chatting with everybody. Is that okay?
‘Using teacher
networks for support
will have a real
impact on making
new teachers
effective quickly.’
—Kathleen Fulton
Maybe it is. Maybe we’re dealing with a gen-
eration who can do what they need to in their
classroom while chatting with a student three
doors down. It opens up a whole other way
of thinking about instruction and how we
view schools.
To drop this technology in and open up the
walls of the school like you’re doing, Steven,
kind of scares people and they don’t always
know how to deal with that. Right now, we’re
having that conversation. Do we screen every-
thing that kids can access on the Internet or
do we teach them how to distinguish between
what they should be going to and what they
shouldn’t be going to? And what is good
(Continued on page 8)
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Page 7
ONLINE LEARNING, SHARING, AND CARING
Editor’s Note: Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Ky., took technology leader-
ship and professional development to a new level with its Online Book Study Project. Here’s
how they did it.
W
e started the Online Book Study
Project to encourage a higher level
of professional development, en-
gage teachers through current professional
literature, elicit self-reflection of their prac-
tices, and create a caring com-
munity of teacher-learners.
The project began with a face-
to-face gathering so the partic-
ipants could meet, check out the
books from the professional li-
brary, and ensure they were com-
fortable using JCPS Online, the
district’s online-learning environment. For
the next four weeks, they read either Digital
Citizenship in Schools by Mike Ribble and
Gerald Bailey or Web 2.0: New Tools, New
Schools by Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum,
and participated in an online discussion. For
successful participation—defined as con-
tributing to 80 percent of the discussions and
completing a project—each teacher received
six hours of professional-development credit.
The project was innovative for several rea-
sons. Participants could choose when they par-
ticipated. For the cohort, it offered extended
intellectual and reflective professional-
development experience. For the district, it was
an excellent example of shared resources and
fiscal responsibility, as each set of books were
used repeatedly. The project also encouraged
technological creativity; in their online dis-
cussions, participants shared resources such
as digital videos.
Revitalized Professional Development
While previous attempts at online book stud-
ies have been difficult to manage, this model
was successful because it shared the respon-
sibilities of developing content, managing
resources, and handling technological com-
ponents with those who do it best. This model
also increased the value and use of two
by Jeremy Renner and Linda Gray
district investments: the professional library
and JCPS Online.
The impact of the Online Book Study Pro-
ject has been exceptional. One entire school
staff went through an online book study as
a cohort, and it changed the common
practice and created a com-
mon vocabulary. Teachers
have found colleagues
throughout the district with
whom they can continue to
collaborate.
With input from the
professional-development
office, we created a template that includes a
10-step process for departments to follow. The
potential for academic departments to collab-
orate with us is unlimited; we will develop
an online book study for anyone.
The Online Book Study Project is aligned
with our district’s vision of creating a caring
community of learners. Depending on the
text of the books, the studies will support the
vision and goals of the academic depart-
ments who help design future projects. ::
Jeremy Renner is the technology resource
teacher for the Jefferson County Public Schools
(JCPS) in Louisville, Ky., and a 2008 NSBA
“20 to Watch” educator. He championed ini-
tiatives to get laptops for low-income
students, to ensure classrooms were Web-
enabled, and to give 5,700 teachers in a
special program tablet PCs, projection
devices, and professional development.
Linda Gray is the resource librarian at the
JCPS Professional Library. She finds innova-
tive ways to connect district employees with
professional resources and information and
has worked with the district’s 140 schools
to improve library collections and create
improved learning spaces.
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WHAT IS LEADERSHIP? (Continued from page 7)
‘As soon as [kids] walk out the door, they’re going
on Google, so let’s teach them how to do an
advanced Google search and find good informa-
tion. That’s the fight.’
information and what’s not good information?
That’s a major debating point right now for us.
SÁNCHEZ: I would agree. That becomes such
a critical piece because that’s where the real
one-on-one discussion happens: What are you
learning? But actually, what we are finding in
those conversations is that’s where we can help
the kids better understand the complexities they
face as they start to go out on their own online.
That’s a great point and it’s something we’re
going to have to look at. But I don’t think it
should be a point that keeps us from moving for-
ward and trying new models to keep kids engaged.
CORALLO: We’ve got a lot of teachers who
know school the way they’ve always known
school. It’s hard to convince them that it’s bet-
ter to teach kids how to do an advanced Google
search rather than tell them to use the library
databases, [even if] we know when they go
home they’re going to Google anyway. People say,
“No, no, no; we must only teach them to go to
the databases, because that’s safe and secure.”
But that’s not the world [kids] live in. As soon
as they walk out the door, they’re going to go
on Google, so let’s teach them how to do an ad-
vanced Google search and find good information.
That’s the fight.
BOWDEN: That is the fight. When you live in
a world where a teenager can have the entire Li-
brary of Congress and all the information of the
known world on his cell phone and can actually
kick that information up any time he wants, you
wonder whether or not some of the instruction
we do is way too information-based and not
skill-based at all. If you understand what you’re
8 :: CABLE IN THE CLASSROOM :: JUNE 2009
—Christopher Corallo
looking for and you can understand the expla-
nation, then aren’t you set?
THE QUINTESSENTIAL QUESTION
CORALLO: Here’s a question we struggle with
that I’d like to run by the rest of you. Can you
be considered a truly good teacher today and not
use technology at all?
FULTON: The flip answer might be, “Oh yes,
sure you can be a good teacher and not use
technology.” But I really think, in this day and
age, a teacher—whether they’re using technol-
ogy in the classroom or staying up to date with
material using technology at home or to commu-
nicate with parents or other teachers—I think
the problem with saying yes means that the
teacher is closing himself or herself off in an old
model of the isolated teacher, one who is not
going to be in a position to expand and share
and be open.
Technology opens up the classroom in ways that
benefit the kids.
CORALLO: Kathleen, talking about the teacher
closing off their instruction or keeping it more
of a closed environment is interesting. We’ve
had this discussion for about a year, and we
came to the conclusion that—at least in our
county—you cannot be considered a truly good
teacher if you don’t use technology. We have stu-
dents who are using technology on their own, and
we need to make sure our environment matches
their learning style. Also, and probably most im-
portant, if we are truly preparing our students
for the world beyond our school walls, they are
going to be living and experiencing this technol-
ogy. So it is part of our responsibility to use the
technology in the same way that they’re going
to be using it once they leave our doors.
BOWDEN: I think that whenever you’re talk-
ing about school change or change in any human
activity, you have to bear in mind the bell curve.
And all we can really do is move that mean over
towards excellence. But there will always be peo-
ple who will represent the tail end of the bell
curve. We can’t get too hung up on people who
lag behind, but I think when they see that
the mean is moving, there is sort of a self-
correcting factor.
CORALLO: I agree with that. I think that there
are people who will move as the mean moves for-
ward. But I also think, as leaders, one of the
things that has to happen is that we have to set
forth a vision that says, “This is what schooling
should look like today in our classrooms.” And
if [teachers] don’t buy into that, we’re going to
help [them] figure out how to structure the class-
room so they are doing what they need to do to
move forward on that bell curve. Hold up the suc-
cesses, but don’t beat them with the failures, and
hopefully they will start self-correcting.
Now we’ve framed it. We’ve said, “This is an
expectation, but we’re going to help you do it,
and look how successful you’re being when you
do.” Hopefully that’s going to change their be-
lief and they will start to understand that this
is something foundationally important. ::
Speak Out
Question: Can you be a good teacher today
without using technology?
Send your comments to: cic_interactive@ccicrosby.com. In-
clude your name, title, school affiliation, city/town, phone
number, and e-mail. Responses may be published in a fu-
ture issue. 200-word limit.
RELATED RESOURCES
Tabula Digita
www.tabuladigita.com
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