By Harry Tuttle, CIO Advisor
Administrators have a fantastic opportunity to help improve the quality of teaching in their schools through using web tools. Asadministrators walk around and see examples of higher-level learning, they can capture the learning through pictures or videos. They will make sure that the pictures or videos clearly show the specific learning goal and the higher level-learning as opposed to some “cute” picture of students.
For example, an administrator could take a picture of a student-made social studies concept map that contrasts the causes ofthe American Revolution and the American Civil War. The administrator could post it to the school website, Facebook page, or a Flickr school page. Likewise, the administrator could tweet, “English 8 students work in groups of three to help each other have more evidence and detail in their essay paragraphs.”
In addition, the building leader can record students talking about what they learned during a certain unit and then post that as part of the school podcasts. Through using technology, the administrators share these great learning examples with their building teachers so that classroom teachers can learn about and implement new strategies for improving student learning. When this happens, administrators will find that teachers will soon be contacting them about the higher-level learning taking place in their classrooms so that their students can be featured in the next social media blast.
Harry Tuttle has been a classroom teacher, a technology integration teacher and a director/coordinator of K-12 technology in two districts. He focuses on improving student learning. Check out his formative assessment books at http://bit.ly/Tutbks.
