Chapter 4
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Case Study
Reflections of a New Hampshire Superintendent and Principal
Time, tools, and training – three critical, inextricably linked concepts, necessary to move a school district forward. As technology becomes more and more interwoven into the fabric of everyday life, schools need to provide the time, tools, and training to utilize technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of all aspects of schooling. At the same, time schools must be careful not to replace core practices with technological replacements simply because they are less expensive or the next big thing. Successfully implementing technological improvements with efficacy to a school district’s core mission and values is the land of critical mass. It is the noble pursuit in the Hopkinton School District.
From the district perspective, technology has been interwoven into every aspect of district operations.
Communication: From community and parent email listservs, to wiki websites used to track and receive feedback on committee work, to screencasts that allow particular nuances of a subject to be explained, to posting school board audio recordings on the website, to an automatic call system: technology as enhanced communication with the community.
Collaboration: From utilizing Google documents to develop a policy, technology plan, or project work to document sharing with the executive assistant, to Skyping in an administrator home with an ill child to a meeting, technology has enhanced collaboration.
Operations: From a budget program that supports off-site purchase order approval and easy report production, to a professional development management tool which tracks activities by goal, to the approval, tracking, and revision of federal grant monies: web-based applications have increased operational efficiency exponentially.
Data-based decision-making: From gap analyses by subgroup on the state test, to high-quality self-adjusting assessments, to understanding each student’s Lexile to support reading selection, to making just-in-time student information available to focus intervention planning: technology has enhanced the past practice of decision by anecdote by including data.
From a school perspective, it is important that we utilize technology to force greater efficiency. Technology must do more than raise the bar for our work; it has to create time so that we can be more effective and have more time for instruction. Teaching is still a contact sport.
With a relatively simple technology infrastructure, principals complete classroom observations with laptops and iPads and feedback is sent instantly to the teacher via email. While deeper conversations must still occur face to face, teachers and administrators can exchange details such as schedules and meeting minutes via email with important faculty documents housed on a wiki. Instead of staff meetings dominated by minutiae, technology is used to communicate everything that doesn’t need discussion so that staff meetings can be primarily utilized for professional development.
Parent communication has reached the 21st century in Hopkinton. Harold Martin School completes a monthly podcast for parents utilizing a new digital media studio funded primarily through grant funds. While led primarily by the principal, the podcast includes contributions from students and teachers. Parents feel more connected via a podcast versus the traditional weekly newsletter sent home in student backpacks. One school utilizes a Twitter account to remind parents of timely information.
Classrooms throughout the district utilize interactive white boards, which have begun to revolutionize feedback of content understanding between the student and teacher. Through interactive Quick Response systems, students are able to quickly inform the teacher on their level of understanding of a particular concept. It seems unfathomable that we ever taught geometry without this incredible tool. Even the primary grade teachers are beginning to utilize laptops and computer projector technology, which allows them to conjure up a thought and be able to express it through the wide range of the Internet.
Want to take a course that is not offered in your school, such as a higher-level calculus class or a world language such as Mandarin Chinese? One can utilize a virtual school such as our own in New Hampshire called Virtual Learning Academy Charter School. While the offices for VLACS are located in Exeter, the school is located wherever a computer, tablet, or smartphone device and a wireless connection exist.
Time is the currency of school improvement. Technology has the power to simultaneously improve all aspects of schooling while forcing increased efficiency. The increasing efficiency allows more time to focus on the leadership and substantive change. However, it is essential that technology be seen as a tool that exists to serve the educational values we hold dear. It can never be an entity unto itself.
Source: William V. Carozza is the principal of the Harold Martin School in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, and a nationally known digital age technology user of social networking tools for educational communications and improvement.
Steven M. Chamberlin is the superintendent of schools in Hopkinton School District and a doctoral student at the University of New Hampshire, studying leadership and policy development.