When Dr. Scott McLeod, CASTLE Director, was at the University of Minnesota, he co-created the first graduate program in the United States designed to prepare technology-savvy school leaders. The School Technology Leadership Initiative (STLI) was the first academic program based on the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) and was the only one proven (by the American Institutes for Research) to have positive, statistically-significant impacts on participants’ technology leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities. We ran four cohorts through that program before Dr. McLeod came to the University of Kentucky and it was a phenomenal experience.
CASTLE will begin offering its online school technology leadership courses again, this time here at the University of Kentucky! Our projected start date is Fall 2012 (three years later than originally planned. Ugh.).
The School Technology Leadership program
We will offer five 3–credit courses over the course of a calendar year (3 semesters):
- 21st Century Leadership
- Digital Age Learning and Technology Leadership
- Professional Development for School Technology Leadership
- School Technology Leadership and School Improvement
- School Technology Leadership and Digital Citizenship
Spring semester will begin by grounding participants in the intersections of P-12 leadership and digital technologies. Students also will immerse themselves in discussion of what constitutes effective classroom technology integration.
Summer semester will focus on operational issues. The first course will address how schools use technology to run the management side of things. The second course will target how schools use technology to manage the curriculum and instruction aspects of their organizations (e.g., student learning data, curriculum mapping and alignment).
Fall semester will include discussion of the administrative issues, legal concerns, and parent fears that accompany the use of technology in schools. The final course will focus on whatever ‘hot topics’ seem appropriate (e.g., virtual schooling, educational gaming, the 21st century skills movement, 1:1 laptop initiatives).
All courses will be online. All courses will be aligned with the new NETS-A. These courses will be an ideal mechanism for schools and districts to build their technology-related leadership capacity and are an excellent resource for superintendents, principals, district technology coordinators, media specialists, teachers, and other educators interested in the leadership aspects of K-12 technology.
Note: Although we don’t have formal approval yet from UKY, we are working to make these courses into a 15–credit graduate certificate program!
These are Master’s-level credits suitable for education licensure renewal. They also may be suitable as transfer credits for UKY’s or other universities’ P-12 educational leadership, instructional technology, and/or other graduate programs.
About the instructors
Dr. McLeod has been teaching Master’s- and doctoral-level courses in P-12 educational leadership for ten years now and has extensive experience teaching in hybrid and/or wholly-online formats. His teaching evaluations typically are in the 4.7 – 5.0 range on a scale of 1 to 5. He was the first untenured professor to ever win the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human DevelopmentDistinguished Teaching Award.
Dr. John Nash also will be teaching in the certificate program.
Our Technology Integration and Staff Development course will be taught by the faculty in ISU’s Center for Technology in Learning and Teaching. The CTLT faculty are nationally-renowned for their expertise in learning technologies.
Depending on demand, we also may need to pull in some top-notch adjuncts from across the country. If so, we’ll make sure they’re phenomenal!
Questions?
