Podcast Reflection from AASA
The American Association of School Administrators (AASA) has a podcast that focuses on successful trends in education. They mainly interview successful superintendents and school officials. The most recent post on October the 6th, 2015 was about the top factors that determine success in education technology on a school system wide level. The host was Dan Domenech and he interviewed Terry Grier, the superintendent of the Houston Independent School District.
In this podcast Dr. Grier explained the key factors needed to effectively use technology in the nation's seventh largest school system and how that applies to any district. When starting down the path of digital transformation it is very important to begin by giving teachers the support they needed. When looking around the county Dr. Grier found that Mark Edwards, superintendent of Mooresville Graded School District, was apparently doing something right. Edwards and the school district administrators explained that they were very purposeful in what they did and are continuing to do. After hear from Mooresville they realized that they needed to implement the digital transformation in specific intervals and certainly not all at once. Dr. Grier and his district also realized that they needed to focus on the schools where the administrators were already technologically driven.
Finally, they found that teacher training is particularly important during this wholeistic approach to using technology in the school.
Dr. Grier said,“It is not about the machine at all...”
He went on to explained that it is about training the teacher to be an actual facilitator of learning in the classroom.
Below you will find the description of the podcast directly from the show notes on iTunes. You can also listen to the podcast by clicking here.
The Top 3 Factors that Determine Success or Failure with Education Technology ReleasedOct 06, 2015
The road to launching digital technologies in school districts is riddled with stories of missteps, misfires and outright failures. By contrast, our guest has led one of the most successful school transitions to digital technology in the nation. In this segment, he tells us why patience is a virtue when going digital. Follow: @aasadan @bamradionetwork #supchat #satchat #edchat Terry Grier is superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, the nation's seventh largest school system and an acknowledged leader in digital conversion. Dr. Grier was named a Leader To Learn From by Education Week for HISDs PowerUp initiative which provides laptops to high school students for anytime/anywhere learning. PowerUp has also established a districtwide digital platform, known as the HUB, that is transforming teaching and learning, and is moving HISD away from the use of textbooks in favor of digital curricula.
