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Principals sit in a very difficult position when it comes to educational technology. They face pressures about what digital learning approaches to take and what tech products to buy-from the central office, education companies, teachers, parents, and students. Some will embrace their choices, while others will question them-or in some cases, even try to undermine them.

That's why many ed-tech experts say that the success of digital learning initiatives often hinges on the principal's ability to find the right balance among all the various groups in a school community. But, ultimately, principals also must make tough decisions based on the best interests of students.

"Whether [the technology is] for learning or it's for teaching, we want to look at it, we want to explore it, and if it's something that we find is useful, then we'll actually put the money into it," said Brad Currie, the director of planning, research, and evaluation for the Chester school district in Morris County, N.J., who helped his district implement a 1-to-1 computing program while he was vice principal of Black River Middle School there.

To get a sense of where the pressure points are around some core ed-tech issues, the Education Week Research Center conducted a nationally representative survey of 500 principals, assistant principals, and school deans.

The survey found the greatest pressure was largely coming from vendors and the central office-not teachers, parents, or students.

Regarding the personalized-learning movement, for instance, 55 percent of principals felt mild to strong pressure from technology companies to welcome the movement, and 46 percent felt such pressure from district leaders.

Technology companies also topped the pressure-cooker list when principals were asked if they felt pressure to reject or accept computer science education, with 47 percent of principals feeling mild or strong pressure from them to do so. District leaders were second, with 39 percent of principals citing such pressures.

Winston Sakurai, the principal of the upper school grades 7-12 Hanalani Schools, a private Christian school in Hawaii, said some technology companies have gotten more creative and aggressive in trying to get his attention. In the old days, they just sent mailers or catalogs with their product pitches.

"Now, it's emails from tech companies asking, "Are you interested in this? Can we set up a phone call? Can we set something up?' " he said.

A few times, education company marketers have called his secretary directly insinuating that they had already talked to him and that he was interested in getting more information about the product, even though he had never said so.

"The tactics have gotten a little bit aggressive," he said. "I think it could be frustrating to some people."

Part of the reason for the aggressive outreach is that it's easier to find and contact principals, he said. But, he added, tech companies are also probably facing stiff competition from a glut of free resources that are now available to schools, including Khan Academy, video lessons on YouTube, and free open-sourced curriculum crafted by teachers.

Other survey results and follow-up interviews with principals and district administrators also reveal interesting perspectives on the leadership roles of principals around issues related to personalized learning, screen time, computer science skills, and access to technology. They include:

* Two years after the Obama administration launched its Computer Science for All initiative-aimed at ensuring that students at every grade level have access to computer science courses-only 7 percent of principals and school leaders surveyed said teaching the subject was central to their school's mission and operations. Nearly a third said computer science for all was not on their radar screens.

* Slightly more than half the principals surveyed described personalized learning as a "promising idea" or a "transformational way to improve public education." Another 31 percent said it was "one of many school improvement strategies available" to them.

* Nearly two-thirds of all principals believed students are getting the right amount of screen time in school, while 17 percent believed students were getting too much.

Jethro Jones, the principal of Tanana Middle School in Fairbanks, Alaska, found some of those results surprising.

"I think that anybody who is not seeing [personalized learning] as a transformational way to improve public education doesn't understand what it can be," said Jones, who hosts a weekly podcast, "Transformative Principal," in which he interviews principals who are making a difference in their schools. "Truly personalized learning is the way that deep, meaningful, memorable learning has always happened."

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In the digital age, personalized learning has evolved to include individualized-learning plans for students, continual assessments, and ongoing feedback loops. Schools have also redesigned learning spaces to allow students to work at their own pace, in small groups, or individually.

It's "about giving kids what they need, when they need it, and being aware enough of what's going on in their lives and what their skills are to be able to give them extra support," he said. "Technology allows us to do it at scale, but technology does not allow us to do it, period. There's an important distinction there that you don't have to have technology to personalize learning for your kids."

Brian Partin, the president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, similarly said that personalized learning gives educators an opportunity to provide differentiated supports for students. He, too, was surprised that more of his colleagues do not have as positive a view of personalized learning as he does.

In Tennessee's Kingsport City school district, where Partin worked as a middle school principal before going on leave to serve as the NAESP president, the movement to personalize learning is the result of expectations-he hesitates to use the word "pressure"-at the state and local levels. It grew from the need to implement more rigorous state college and career standards, the district's mission statement to graduate globally competitive citizens, student input, and support from community leaders, he said.

Local businesses have also been part of the discussion to ensure that students have access to meaningful computer-science-based learning experiences, beginning in elementary and continuing through high school.

"When you are talking about ensuring college-and-career readiness for all students, a big part of that is making sure that they are technically ready to enter either the workforce or college, because so much of what we do in the workforce and throughout college has that need for a good, solid understanding of computer science," Partin said.

Students are also a central part of the conversation in Kingsport and other districts. They provide feedback to school administrators through surveys and by participating in student-advisory panels and student councils. (In the Education Week Research Center survey, 31 percent of principals felt mild or strong pressure from students to embrace personalized learning, and 32 percent felt such pressure from students to embrace computer science education.)

While 30 percent of principals said that computer science for all was not on their radar screens, the Chester district's Currie said that's his district's passion.

Chester's adoption of a computer science initiative predates the Obama administration initiative. Programs for students have accelerated in recent years as free resources have become more readily available through websites such as Code.org, he said.

Chester's employment of computer science for all was a result of a change in the district's strategic plan, as well as support from the board of education, district leadership, and parents, Currie said.

It involved extensive research, visits to schools that were early adopters, professional development for teachers, physical redesigns of learning spaces to include makerspaces, and the addition of after-school clubs offering students opportunities to learn how to code.

"We never felt any pressure from any ed-tech company to do this," said Currie, who was the National Association of Secondary School Principals' 2017 National Assistant Principal of the Year.

But he doesn't think it's a bad thing if a company were to approach him about a product.

"I am actually approaching companies saying, 'Hey, I have this need; how can you help us out with that need?' " he said. "I don't know if that's the case [everywhere]. I am always looking for new and exciting ways to make teaching fun with technology."

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Ed-Tech Leadership Is a Tough Task for Principals

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Principals sit in a very difficult position when it comes to educational technology. They face pressures about what digital learning approaches to take and what tech products to buy-from the central office, education companies, teachers, parents, and students. Some will embrace their choices, while others will question them-or in some cases, even try to undermine them.

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A classic Dilbert cartoon shows a technician explaining to the pointy-haired boss how he must turn his laptop computer upside down and shake it to reboot. The final panel has one techie asking another, "I wonder if he'll ever realize we gave him an Etch-a-Sketch?"

My guess is that more than one school administrator has found similar "pointy-haired boss" cartoons secretly taped to his or her door. I know I have.

As technology plays an ever more mission-critical role in schools, technology literacy for district, building and program administrators is becoming mission-critical as well.

The National Education Technology Plan ( www.nationaledtechplan.org/), released by the U.S. Department of Education in January 2005, has as its first action step to "strengthen leadership." But what does leadership strengthened with technology look like?
Savvy Personified
One vision is the Technology Standards for School Administrators, or TSSA, adopted in 2002 by the International Society for Technology in Education. These have become the de facto national standards. TSSA includes six Educational Technology Standards and Performance Indicators for Administrators. ISTE's website ( cnets.iste.org/administrators) contains a wealth of information about support for these standards.

In our district, all school leaders are finding the ability to use technology a genuine necessity and benefit in helping them meet their responsibilities. I'll use a colleague, Bruce Borchers, principal at Mankato West High School in Mankato, Minn., to illustrate what it means to be a tech-savvy administrator within each of the six standards.

* Leadership and Vision. Borchers helps create a shared vision and philosophy of technology use by serving on the district and site-based technology planning teams. Our tech plans are increasingly using curriculum and program needs as the driver for technology adoption. Because of his daily interaction with his teachers and students, Borchers provides critical input into the decision-making process. A major challenge is finding the resources for an ambitious upgrade of his school's tech education department.

* Learning and Teaching. Working with his library media specialist, Borchers is supporting teachers to increase integration of technology in all courses, especially the use of reliable online sources of information in research and problem solving. Student access to technology , enabled through the library, open computer labs and wireless connectivity for student-owned laptops and handhelds , is a high priority.

* Productivity and Professional Practice. As principal, Borchers finds communicating regularly and effectively to staff, parents and community using e-mail, listservs and websites is of utmost importance. His school board reports are illustrated with graphs and photos embedded in multimedia presentations. He uses districtwide calendar programs for facilities scheduling and managing his own schedule.

* Support, Management and Operations. Using the student information system, Borchers tracks the day-to-day operations of the school through ready access to schedules, attendance records, health records, discipline incidents, grades and online teacher gradebooks. He carries most of this in his personal digital assistant, synchronized with his desktop computer. He manages his building budget using the district's real-time finance program.

* Assessment and Evaluation. As part of the high school's commitment to documented continuous improvement, Borchers and his site team use the district's data-mining program to evaluate program effectiveness, identify students needing additional attention and plan staff development. Under his leadership, teachers now make their online grade books accessible to parents.

* Social, Legal and Ethical Issues. Creating and enforcing rules and policies regarding school use of technology have become areas of increasing concern. Students, always a step ahead of staff in the use of new technologies, find new ways to communicate, learn and sometimes skirt school rules. Borchers' own understanding and use of technology help him create rules that are both reasonable and effective. An ethical dilemma involves resource allocation-how to balance expenditures on technology with other needs such as class size reduction.
A Harnessed Tool
While I would like my school district's formal program to take credit for developing Borchers' technology proficiencies, I'll admit training for our administrators occurs primarily as needs arise. The old "just-in-case" technology in-service programs have been replaced by a "just-in-time" model. As genuine needs and desires by school leaders arise, our department provides individual or small group training in the use of technology.

We involve administrators in all technology staff development activities and provide rapid technical support. Our district librarians and technologists help build technology leadership capacity by communicating trends, models, best practices and research about educational technology use to administrators.

Instead of looking at technology as just another problem on the list of those we face as administrators, we must harness it as a powerful ally. By purposely and continuously improving our administrative technology skills, we can lead with technology, not be led by it.

You just might need to find some new cartoons for your door.

Doug Johnson is director of media and technology, Mankato Public Schools, P.O. Box 8713, Mankato, MN 56002. E-mail: dougj@doug-johnson.com

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AASA | American Association of School Administrators

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A classic Dilbert cartoon shows a technician explaining to the pointy-haired boss how he must turn his laptop computer upside down and shake it to reboot. The final panel has one techie asking another, "I wonder if he'll ever realize we gave him an Etch-a-Sketch?"

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"Why do wolves howl at the moon?"

"How do cars move?"

"Why don't haircuts hurt?"

Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in the presence of a child has seen how instinctively and wondrously curious they are about the world around them. Their developing brains observe and question the new, unfamiliar or confusing in an effort to understand the world and their place in it. Such exploration is key to learning. But if you're like me, your K-12 experience focused more on educational standards than creative exploration.

Education is complicated. Schools and districts are tasked with many challenges-from classroom management and test scores to student safety and emotional well-being. It's not surprising, then, that the more creative, exploratory elements of instruction take a backseat at times. Yet, we know that teachers deem them essential.

GoGuardian's research team recently conducted a survey of educators from 40 countries to gather insights about the instructional practices that drive student engagement. Responses revealed that, when it comes to engagement, teachers value learning experiences that address the whole child-creatively, cognitively and emotionally. Of all outputs, creativity and self-expression were rated highest for their perceived impact on student engagement.

Thankfully, the prevalence of technology in education gives us a powerful opportunity to mitigate many of the challenges that our schools are facing and help students reach their full potential. With thoughtfully developed tools, we can make great teaching more effective and empower teachers to create educational experiences that inspire students.

At GoGuardian, our philosophical belief is that students are inherently curious, and it's a matter of supporting teachers and schools to enable the right set of educational experiences. We are focused on helping educators deliver impact in a few key areas:

Creating active learning experiences that foster self-expression

What happens when students are given more options to engage with content and demonstrate their learning? Research has shown that tools like Pear Deck that support active learning can improve equity, reduce achievement gaps and help improve school culture. When students are able to demonstrate their thinking in a variety of ways and hear their ideas being discussed in class, student engagement and confidence increase. Out-of-the-box thinking from teachers-in how they teach, deliver information and collect student work-supports creative output from students.

Enhancing student-teacher relationships

Technology can never replace the role of a teacher, nor should that ever be the goal. Students who are connected to, and feel supported by, their teacher are more likely to develop a growth mindset and improve their social-emotional skills. Technology can give teachers a connection point with students for support and engagement, whether they're in a physical classroom or learning remotely.

GoGuardian Teacher and Pear Deck allow teachers to provide personalized, private feedback on student work, driving metacognition for those on track and better supporting those who may be struggling. These moments of connection help teachers build trusting relationships with their students, which improve classroom climate and learning outcomes.

Pear Deck Logic Model

Keeping students safe with thoughtfully placed guardrails

Technology opens many doors, but not all doors are safe or appropriate for students to walk through-especially during class. With tools like GoGuardian Teacher and GoGuardian Beacon, schools can keep students focused on learning, while also ensuring that they have the support needed if a crisis arises. With proper guardrails, digital learning environments are safer and more productive, allowing students to more freely explore their interests and curiosities.

Amplifying student voices

Encouraging broad class participation is a familiar struggle for many educators. And the absence of student feedback raises real concerns: Are students engaged with the lesson at all? Do they have a stake in their own learning?

Students may hold back in classroom discussions for many reasons: shyness, lack of confidence, not understanding the content or questions, etc. They may not want to risk embarrassment-or they may be thinking through the question more deeply than their peers.

Recommended Resources

Classroom technology, like Pear Deck and GoGuardian Teacher, makes room for more students to share their thoughts, ideas and knowledge at the pace that works for them. Teachers using Pear Deck, for example, may opt to control the pace of a lesson or give students more freedom. For synchronous work, Pear Deck's Lock Timer encourages teachers to slow down and allow for different processing time. Educators using GoGuardian Teacher can also see students working in real time, so even if a student never raises their hand, their teacher can be sure they're tuned in and making progress with the rest of the class.

The future of digital learning

K-12 education will always experience challenges, but each presents an opportunity to unleash curiosity, foster engagement and advance learning outcomes for all students. As the learning landscape continues to change, digital learning tools must keep pace, supporting teachers every step of the way and making room for more creativity, more curiosity and more wonder in the classroom.

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The Link Between Edtech, Curiosity and Creativity in the Classroom - EdSurge News

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"Why do wolves howl at the moon?" "How do cars move?" "Why don't haircuts hurt?" Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in the presence of a child has seen how instinctively and wondrously curious they are about the world around them.