Effective Leadership and Management
Are Keys to Innovative Tech Integration
ISSUE ORIENTED
By Anita McAnear
Anita McAnear is
L&L’s acquisitions
editor and national
program chair for
ISTE’s conference and
exposition. A former
middle school math
and language arts
teacher, McAnear
has been with ISTE
since 1983.
Once again, ISTE and THE Journal had incredible submissions for the Sylvia Charp Award, which recognizes school
districts that show effectiveness and innovation in the application of technology ( iste.org/
sylviacharp). Leadership and management—our
target topics this issue—are essential to schools
working to meet NETS standards to improve
learning, teaching, and administration.
Key strategies we saw school leaders using
in Charp submissions included a districtwide
focus on communication and collaboration,
support for the use of open source technology
and web 2.0 tools, the promotion of writing as a
cross-curricular skill, intensive ed tech training for
administrators, online and blended learning, and
inventive strategies for funding one-to-one computing. Other innovative curriculum models included TPACK, Willard Daggett’s Rigor/Relevance
Framework, project- or challenge-based learning,
and a focus on higher-order thinking skills.
Leadership and strategic planning with ongoing assessment was evident in all nominations.
District leaders also provided tools and management to help teachers attain digital age skills
and facilitate communication and collaboration
among themselves and their students.
This year’s award winner, Vail School District
in Arizona, is moving curriculum development
forward with its Beyond Textbooks program
(see page 10). Vail’s strategy was to invert the
traditional textbook-driven curriculum by start-
ing with standards and building the curriculum
using online resources. Their model is highly
replicable and honors the professionalism and
expertise of teachers by putting them in a lead-
ership and management position. They also
provided teachers with a wiki to collect the digi-
tal curriculum materials and communicate and
collaborate with peers. As a result, the district
has created a tool that teachers in other districts
contribute to and use.
