soe 2009-2010 final activity report narrative_becker_051710

8/8/2019 SOE 2009-2010 Final Activity Report Narrative_Becker_051710

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2009-2010

Final Activity Report

Narrative

(Separate Word Document)

Name Jonathan D. Becker

TEACHING AND ADVISING

Fall 2009 ADMS 707: The Politics of Education

I consider myself a lifelong learner as a learning facilitator. That is, I am alwaysstriving to improve my work as a teacher. Thus, I believe I am obligated to regularlymake changes to the content and the pedagogy of the courses I teach. The challengefor me...has always been to cultivate student engagement through active, meaningfullearning. Active learning, according to Bonwell and Eison (1991), is defined asinstructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what theyare doing (p. 2). Meaningful learning is about relevance, both in terms of content andform. In all, I take pride in the work I have done to this point as a teacher.

This year, I only taught one formal course, but I took a HUGE set of leaps into

new ways of facilitating learning with technology in that one course. I started with thecontention that advances in technology render obsolete any theory of learning thatinvolves the individual construction of knowledge. Specifically, [u]biquitous learning isa new educational paradigm made possible in part by the affordances of digital media(Cope & Kalantzis, 2007, p. 1). Furthermore, contemporary forms of computer-mediated communications and related networking technologies change the nature of learning by enabling social constructions of knowledge. Weinbergers example of Wikipedia is the ultimate representation of this collision of technology-enablednetworked learning; i.e. Wikipedia represents an instance of social knowledge (i.e. it isan attempt to capture, as public knowledge, what can be observed via the interactionsof numerous instances of private knowledge) facilitated by a simple technology (thewiki).

Thus, with the nature of knowledge changing from individually to sociallyconstructed, and with the emergence of social media technologies, a new theory of learning must be enacted. Siemens (2005) offers connectivism as a learning theorythat moves away from objective-based learning and that accounts for the networkedlearning opportunities afforded by the digital age. Undergirding connectivism is a viewof learning as a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core


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elements not entirely under the control of the individual. Cormier (2008) takesconnectivism a step further in the form of rhizomatic education. The rhizome is offeredas a metaphor for knowledge.

therhizomatic plant has no center and no defined boundary; rather, it is made

up of a number of semi-independent nodes, each of which is capable of growingand spreading on its own, bounded only by the limits of its habitat. In therhizomatic view, knowledge can only be negotiated, and the contextual,collaborative learning experience shared by constructivist and connectivistpedagogies is a social as well as a personal knowledge-creation process withmutable goals and constantly negotiated premises (Cormier, 2008, para. 3).

What if, as professors of education, we embraced networking technologies andconsidered our students as semi-independent nodes?

This was the very question that guided my teaching experiment in the fall of 2009. As the designated "instructor" for ADMS 707 (The Politics of Education), Iintended to do very little instruction. The challenge for me, then, was to cultivateengagement through active, meaningful learning. Active learning, according to Bonwelland Eison (1991), requires that students read, write, discuss, or be engaged in solvingproblems, (Bonwell & Eison, 1991, p. 2).

To that end, the students doid lots of reading, writing and discussing. Thelearning the students did could be characterized as:

Collaborative - WE (including me) learned together. We shared data andinformation and we supported each others' learning as much as possible.

Documented - I cared more about the processes of learning the students

undertook than the specifics of the knowledge they constructed. Studentsdocumented that learning process, and they did that in the...

Open - by exposing their learning to their colleagues and the public, took thefirst steps in taking control of their digital identity and expanding their horizonsas learners.

My main expectation was for the students to learn and learn hard. As Dr. GaryStager writes , "Let your personality shine and most importantly, HAVE A GO! Be present,take some risks, stretch yourself." I took cues here from at least two sources. First, Dr.Gary Stager, shared a syllabus he used for a course he teaches at Pepperdine University.

In that syllabus, he wrote:

"My goal is to create authentic contexts for learning. This makes it neither desirable or possible to create a precise calendar of events, assignments and discussion topics inadvance. The syllabus is a a blueprint - an invitation to engage in the social constructionof knowledge ."


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Second, Shelly Blake-Pock (aka @Teachpaperless ) wrote a blog post called " WikiSyllabus ." There, he wrote: " ...over the course of the semester, I want and will encouragemy students to update, remix, and redesign my syllabus. I want them to own it. I want it to reflect their needs ."

Thus, to those ends, I made it clear to the students that syllabus was OURS and that itwas intentionally flexible and negotiable.

Here is what I asked students to do between class sessions:

1. Read Bridging Differences 2. Read at least three journal articles related to the topic of the upcoming session. Youwill find the articles yourself. The only specifications are: (a) the articles should bedirectly related to the topic of exploration for the upcoming week, (b) at least onearticle that you read should be an empirically-based article (i.e. it should report theresults of empirical research undertaken by the authors), and (c) at least two of thearticles should be from peer-reviewed journals.3. Summarize the articles by completing the Google form embedded on our ArticleSummary Form page 4. Blog about what you're reading and experiencing. There is neither a minimum nor amaximum number of blog posts I expect from you each week. My only expectation isthat you use the blog as a space to publicly reflect on the information you areencountering throughout the reading that you are doing. Some weeks you will bemoved to reflect more than others.5. Share information you come across by tagging it in Delicious (and elsewhere) as"ADMS707"

NOTE: In addition to reading, summarizing, blogging, sharing, etc. the major/finalproduct for this class is the production of a digital story/movie. The specifications forthat project are on the Digital Storytelling Project page.

Here is what the students did during our class sessions:

4 :30 - 5:15: Read article summaries and blog posts of your classmates. You cancomment on blog posts where you are moved to do so or mark blog posts where youwant to comment during the week. The goal here is to get your mind out of the day'sevents and wrapped around the topic of the session.5:15 - 6:45 : Full class discussion. Here's where we will wrestle with the issues youencountered in your readings.6:45 - 7:00: BREAK7:00 - 8:00: Time for you to work on your movies .8:00 - 8:30: Re-convene as a full class to debrief, discuss, plan, complain, refine, etc.

Thus, I structured the class so that the students could share information duringand between class sessions, both digitally and face-to-face. They co-constructed a


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database of over 200 articles (with summaries) on the Politics of Education. They testedthe blogging waters. They pushed their technological literacies to the limit by bloggingand ultimately by exploring a new form of composition, their digital stories.

Only four students responded to the course evaluation forms. For the most part,

those students indicated that I was available, respectful, courteous and well prepared.Interestingly, for questions 7 and 8, of the students chose neither agree nordisagree. Those items are: The instructors choice of instructional materials facilitatedmy learning in this course and The instructors teaching techniqueshelped me learnthe material in this course. I do not know if the students responded this way as a truemidpoint or because they truly do not agree or disagree (i.e. it is more of a notapplicable response). I hope the latter is true since I did not choose the instructionalmaterials for this course. The course was designed exactly so the students could choosewhich texts/articles/etc. they wanted to read. Also, as the course description abovesuggests, there was very little formal teaching that happened in the course. Thecourse was largely designed for minimally-guided self-directed learning.

In all, I dont know that every aspect of the course was a huge success. I knowthat I learned a lot as a learning facilitator and the students were forced to thinkdifferently about how learning might be structured in a graduate course. I get the sensethat the course was designed so differently than prior courses that some studentsstruggled with the freedom to learn what they wanted (within some constraints) and, toa degree, how they wanted to learn. I also know that I will continue down this path; theaffordances for learning of advanced, networking technologies must be brought to bearon the learning experiences for advanced learners.

Dissertation Advisement Currently chairing (or chaired) 12 dissertations

o Robin Franklin successfully defended dissertation, November 09o Troy Wright dissertation defense date is April 28, 2010o Mary Eckert will defend dissertation, summer 2010o Ann Nash working on prospectus (EDUS 899)o Naeemah Rodriguez successfully defended prospectus, March 2010o Michae Jamison currently taking EDUS 890o Sheron Carter-Gunter currently taking EDUS 641o Evelina Davis - currently taking EDUS 890o Emily Snead - currently taking EDUS 890o John Andrews - currently taking EDUS 890o Lee Naughton - currently taking EDUS 890o Jan Parrish - working on prospectus (EDUS 899)

Currently serving (or served) on 11 dissertation committees


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RESEARCH AND SCHOLARLY ACTIVITY

For me, academic year 2009-10 was not my most productive year with respect totraditional scholarly activity. I worked on a couple of articles to be published in peer-reviewed journals, but I focused most of my scholarly activity around grant work andpresenting at professional conferences. That said, I have a few complete or nearlycomplete manuscripts that are primed to be sent off for possible publication thissummer. I also have an agreement to produce a book chapter that is due this summer. Ilook forward to disseminating lots of knowledge through appropriate professionalchannels this summer.

Presentations

As I did the year before, I made it a point this year to branch out and to presentat a number of new (for me) conferences. Furthermore, I purposefully chose to presentat practitioner-oriented conferences. Increasingly, I find the scholar-practitionerdichotomy in education to be a false one reinforced by conferences predominantlyattended by either professors or P-12 educators. For a number of years, I have beenattending the UCEA and AERA annual conferences which are gatherings of academics. Istill attend those conferences when I can, but I presented at some extraordinary eventssuch as Educon and the CoSN annual conference this past academic year. Table one liststhe conferences at which I was honored with an opportunity to present.

Table 1. Conference Presentations 2008-09 National/International Presentations

Presenter(s)(Year,Month)

Title of Presentation Conference/Meeting City, State, Country

Becker, J.D. (2009,November)

Leadership 2.0:TransformingSchooling inand for the21st Century

Texas EducationalService Center (ESC)11 VirtualTechnologyConference (VTC)

Texas (virtual)

Becker, J.D. (2010,January)

Educational Technology and the Law:Stump theLawyers

Educon 2.2 Philadelphia, PA

Becker, J.D. (2010,

March)

Legal Issues

and the Web:Educator FreeSpeech in theDigital Age

COSN Annual

Conference

Washington, D.C.

Eagen, T. &Becker, J.D.

(2010,May)

Perceptions,Use and Regulation of the Internet: AStudy of

AmericanEducationalResearch Association(AERA) AnnualConference

Denver, CO


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Parent- Adolescent Dyads

Becker, J.D.,Brueck, J. &

Craft, C.

(2010,June)

#tweet. #learn.#lead

International Societyfor Technology in

Education (ISTE)Annual Conference

Denver, CO

Regional/State Presentations

Presenter(s)(Year,Month)

Title of Presentation Conference/Meeting City, State, Country

Becker, J.D. (2010,August)

Leadership 2.0:TransformingSchooling inand for the21st Century

CITE Chesterfield County, VA

In the remainder of this subsection, for each of the conferences listed in TableOne, I will provide a brief description of the conference and the presentation along withthe abstract of the presentation.

TX ESC 11 VTC

A 2003 Department of Commerce study ranked 55 industries with respect to informationtechnology (IT)-intensity; education ranked dead last. Furthermore, the amount or frequency of computer use in schools is, on average, very low. Based on a survey of over 3,000 K-12 teachers, Norris etal. (2003) wrote fully 14%...make no use whatsoever of computers for instructional purposes, and nearlyhalf (45%) use it with their students less than 15 minutes per week equivalent to just 3 minutes per

day ! (pp. 17-18).These data about the limited access to and use of technology in the schooling endeavorpotentially render our public schools irrelevant to the digitally-inclined youth they serve, and imperil ourposition in a flat world. They also stand in stark contrast to the possibilities for ubiquitous learningafforded by ubiquitous computing.

Remedying this problem is very much a leadership challenge. That is, decades of research pointto the centrality of leadership to school change/reform/improvement. Yet, increasing empirical evidencesuggests that leadership in and for technology in education is diffuse and ill-defined. This workshop isdesigned as an opportunity to explore how school leaders can position themselves to lead the changetowards 21st Century learning.

Based on a presentation I did for the K12Online Conference in 2008, I was invited

to make a live presentation as part of a virtual technology conference run/hosted by aregional educational service agency in Texas. This presentation was delivered liveusing Elluminate and was part of a virtual technology conference featuring some of theleading thinkers and doers in the educational technology community.


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Educon 2.2

More and more educators are finding creative ways to integrate technology into the teaching and learningprocess. Sometimes, though, those teachers are stymied by legal or regulatory roadblocks. In some cases,the laws and regulations are applied properly. However, in many instances, laws and regulations aremisinterpreted and/or misapplied. Stifling progressive teaching with technology based on themisinterpretation and/or misapplication of laws, regulations or policies is frustrating at best andeducational malpractice at worst. In this "stump the lawyers" session, attendees will have an opportunityto discuss issues at the intersection of educational technology and the law with four uniquely qualified"expert" panelists. All four panelists are formally trained as lawyers, but all work in the field of educational leadership; three as professors and one as a superintendent. They are: *Jonathan Becker,J.D., Ph.D.This will be a hybrid panel discussion. The lead presenter (Becker) will be at Educon and theother panelists will be "there" via videoconferencing technology such as Tokbox or Tinychat. Additionally,the topics for discussion among the panel members will be generated by questions from those attendingthe session (face-to-face or even virtually).

Educon is anextraordinary and relatively new conference. It is billed uniquely:

it isnot a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is, hopefully, aninnovation conference where we can come together, both in person and virtually, todiscuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debateideas -- from the very practical to the big dreams. In its third year, the conferencecontinues to live up to its billing. Held at Science Leadership Academy (SLA), anextraordinary high school in Philadelphia, this gathering was organized and run by thefaculty and students at SLA. There were presenters selected through a peer-reviewprocess, but the presenters were really conversation facilitators. I learned with someextraordinary educators at Educon 2.2 and the relatively innovative conversation Ifacilitated drew rave reviews. I was on sight and brought in a colleague from theUniversity of Kentucky via Skype. We allowed groups of attendees to come up withquestions to try to stump us and conversations ensued.

CoSN

This presentation will discuss the legal issues that arise when schools shift to the use of Web 2.0technologies where students and faculty/staff are posting material and interacting online. The presenterswill discuss areas including privacy, copyright and fair use, free speech, and publishing harms, withpractical strategies to address these concerns in a Web 2.0 environment. The presenters will also addressfree speech and other legal concerns of students and staff related to publishing online informationoutside of the traditional school setting.

CoSN is the national organization for educational technology decision-makers.Their annual conference is typically attended by district- and state-level technologycoordinators/directors. At this years annual conference, I had an opportunity to co-present with Nancy Willard, a nationally recognized expert and authority on issues of Internet safety.


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AERA

Parents have always been the first educators, but if they are to regulate and/or effectively communicatewith their children about the Internet, they first must be aware of the realities of their childrens Internetuse and perceptions, as well as the impact of their Internet regulatory practices. To this point, the extant

research in this area consisted primarily in large-scale surveys of teenagers or parents. No single studyhad explicitly or analytically linked adolescent and parent data about Internet use and perceptions. Byusing dyadic data analysis techniques, the purpose of this study was to examine the level of agreementbetween parents and students on perceptions, use, and regulation of the Internet.

I am very proud to be co-presenting at AERA 2010 with one of my formerdissertation advisees from Hofstra, Dr. Timothy Eagen. This presentation is based on hisdissertation which utilized a unique form of data analysis, dyadic analysis, to examineimportant and timely issues around students, parents and the internet.

ISTE

Schools need leadership from administrators who focus on advancing student and staff learning.21st Century educational leaders should exemplify how an individual uses digital tools and resources tobecome a skilled communicator, collaborator, and devoted lifelong learner. Participants in this session willlearn how educational leaders can use Twitter to support their own professional learning goals whileeffectively modeling the path of the 21st Century students for their staff, community and students.

The presenters will model ways educational leaders can use Twitter to provide transformationalleadership through differentiated learning experiences for both adults and students. Participants willlearn interactively during a focused and intense hands-on session that will leave them with anunderstanding of: What Twitter is; Where and how to sign up to Twitter; How to Tweet, @reply and DM;How they can use and benefit from Twitter for their own learning purposes. After the session, participantswill be prepared to build a personal learning network in a virtual space and lead others into a new era of networked learning.

The presenters will establish a friendly, open atmosphere that shows the participants they will beconstructing knowledge through: Audience driven Q & A; Real-Time data collection and audiencefeedback with Poll Everywhere; Ustream.tv backchannel; Cooperative and networked learning usingTwitter, hashtags, TweetGrid and TwitterFall. Through these hands-on activities the presenters will callupon and integrate the participant's rich work and life experiences into the learning environment tocreate authentic learning opportunities.

I look forward to presenting with two really innovative educators at the nationspremiere educational technology conference this summer. This session is billed as a

Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL) workshop for which educational leaders can register inadvance. As a team of presenters, our goal is to show educational leaders the power of social media (Twitter especially) for professional learning and networking.


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CITE Technology Leadership Academy

A 2003 Department of Commerce study ranked 55 industries with respect to informationtechnology (IT)-intensity; education ranked dead last. Furthermore, the amount or frequency of computer use in schools is, on average, very low. Based on a survey of over 3,000 K-12 teachers, Norris etal. (2003) wrote fully 14%...make no use whatsoever of computers for instructional purposes, and nearlyhalf (45%) use it with their students less than 15 minutes per week equivalent to just 3 minutes per day ! (pp. 17-18).

These data about the limited access to and use of technology in the schooling endeavorpotentially render our public schools irrelevant to the digitally-inclined youth they serve, and imperil ourposition in a flat world. They also stand in stark contrast to the possibilities for ubiquitous learningafforded by ubiquitous computing.

Remedying this problem is very much a leadership challenge. That is, decades of research pointto the centrality of leadership to school change/reform/improvement. Yet, increasing empirical evidencesuggests that leadership in and for technology in education is diffuse and ill-defined. This workshop isdesigned as an opportunity to explore how school leaders can position themselves to lead the changetowards 21st Century learning.

I have been invited by the District Technology Coordinator in Chesterfield County(VA) to be a featured presenter at a technology leadership academy. The participants inthe TLA will be school leaders voluntarily participating in a two-year program to learnadditional leadership practices through educational technology options. I will deliver anupdated version of the Leadership 2.0 presentation I did earlier in the year for theVirtual Technology Conference run by the educational service center in Texas.

Grants

The second major focus of my scholar activities for academic year 2009-10 was

grant writing. I am a co-investigator with Dr. Yael Wyner at CUNY and educators fromthe American Museum of Natural History on a grant funded by the NSF and I am theevaluator for the Project ALL grant at VCU.

Ecology Disrupted: Using real scientific data about daily life to link environmental issues to ecological processes in secondary school science classrooms

PROJECT SUMMARY:The City College of New York and the American Museum of Natural History proposeto refine and develop four case study modules in order to research the question, Can curricular unitsthat incorporate the analysis of real data from published research on the consequences of everyday lifeactivities to link environmental issues to ecological principles improve student learning of ecologicalprinciples, personal and human environmental impacts and the nature of scientific activity? The casestudy modules will use real data from authentic scientific research to link daily life to environmentalissues and ecological principles. The modules will be built around engaging media about the scientistsand their research and designed using a strategy that joins together teacher implementers, educators,researchers, and product developers in order to insure a product accessible to all learners. Controlledefficacy studies of modules will be performed in randomized control trials of the classrooms of 60 ninthgrade Living Environment New York City public school teachers. Existing New York State Regentsassessment items will be examined and new assessment items will be developed, field tested, andanalyzed for validity and reliability. Students in the experimental and control classrooms will be pre- and


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post-tested using the developed assessments. In addition, teachers and students will complete pre-postsurveys, and stratified samples of teachers will be observed and interviewed. To examine the effects of the intervention on student achievement and on instructional practices, descriptive and inferentialstatistics, including analysis of variance procedures will be employed in addressing the core researchquestion dealing with student achievement. Analysis of variance techniques will also be used to examinemain effects and to measure interactions between the intervention and other variables as they relate to

student achievement score.

INTELLECTUAL MERIT:This project seeks to further our understanding of how to frame science conceptsand scientific research in a formal classroom setting by determining whether using everyday activities toexplicitly link environmental issues to ecological principles is an effective approach for helping studentsto connect personal and human impacts to ecology. It also seeks to determine whether analysis of realdata and video profiles of scientists and their research will help students to learn about the nature of scientific activity.

BROADER IMPACT: The focus of these modules on daily life has the potential to personally connecturban students to environmental issues and ecological principles. Also, analysis of published research hasthe potential to help young learners to begin to think scientifically. Through testing and dissemination,these modules will by used by New York City public schools students that belong to underrepresentedgroups. Also local New York City public school teachers and teachers nationally will use these modulesthrough in-person and online courses to explore their own connection to environmental issues andecology and to reflect upon the role of scientific inquiry in building understanding of the natural world.These resources will also be incorporated as links in Holt, Rinehart and Winston textbooks. Finally, weintend to use technology to develop an innovative approach for online delivery of these curricularresources. We plan to design an online module maker using a kit of parts of module components inorder for teachers to create a module suitable for implementation into their particular classroom.

The NSF grant involves the development and testing of unique curricular units tohelp kids understand ecological principles. My role in the project is to lead the pilot and

field testing of the curriculum units. We proposed a quasi-experimental study to testthe efficacy of the units and I am leading that effort along with Dr. Yael Wyner at CUNYand a research assistant based at CUNY.

I attended two grant meetings in New York City this academic year. Before,during and after that meeting, I have been very busy working with Dr. Wyner to designthe pilot and field testing of the curriculum. I have also been working with Dr. BruceTorff at Hofstra who is consulting on the development of the assessment that will beattached to the curriculum units.

The units are being pilot tested with 6 New York City teachers this spring. Sixtyteachers have been recruited to be a part of the field test. These teachers will beteaching the ecology section of the Living Environment this Spring as they have beenunder normal circumstances. Their students will take the student assessment beforeand after that section of the curriculum; they are effectively the control group. Thesesame teachers will be given extensive professional development next year on theEcology Disrupted curriculum before implementing it in the Spring of 2011. Thestudents in their classes next year will be the treatment group.

In addition to helping to conceive this neat quasi-experimental design, I havebeen working with Dr. Wyner on developing teacher and student questionnaires, and


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field observation protocols. Fifteen of the field test teachers will be observed this yearand then again next year when they are teaching the Ecology Disrupted curriculumunits.

Project ALLI am the evaluator on VCUs Project ALL grant. In this role, I have been working

with the project team to complete annual reports and to design a formal evaluation of the leadership development program being designed through the grant. This year, Iundertook the following activities:

Undertook a review of instruments developed for measuring school leadership

Convened a meeting of the project team and the Richmond Public Schoolsevaluation director to discuss research design issues.

Attended the annual meeting of grantees and evaluators in Washington, D.C.

In the coming days, I will be finalizing the IRB application and finalizing plans for baselinedata collection to begin in the Summer 2010.

Journal Articles

Table 2. Manuscripts to be submitted for publication consideration, Summer 2010

Research or Scholarly Work Intended Product Anticipated Completion Date Stage of ActivityLeading Difference: MultipleCase Studies of Leaders of Technologically InnovativeSchools

Co-authored journal article

Will be sent off for publishingconsideration to InternationalJournal of Educational Policy &Leadership in early July 2010.

First draftcomplete

Expression and AssociationRights of School Employees inElectronic Environments


Will be sent off for publishingconsideration to Journal of Law& Technology in early June2010.

First draftcomplete

FOIA, FERPA and Other Acronyms Not Necessarily Beginning with F: A Review

of Information Privacy Issuesin Public Education in theInformation Age


Was reviewed and rejectedonce before; will berepurposed for another journal

to be submitted by end of August 2010.

First draftcomplete


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Parent and adolescent internet use, perception, and regulation: A Dyadic analysis


Will be presented at AERA2010. AFter that, will be editedbased on feedback and sent off for publication in peer-reviewed journal TBD by end of August 2010.

Paper submittedfor AERA

Book Review: The World isOpen: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education

Sole-authored journal article

I have agreed to write a bookreview for in education, anopen-access peer-reviewed

journal about technology ineducation(http://www.ineducation.ca/ )

Forthcoming

Book Chapter

I was asked and agreed to write a chapter for an upcoming book to be publishedby the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). The book chapter is dueat the end of June 2010. The Table of Contents of the book is below.

What Administrators Need To Know About Technology Leadership1. Foreword - Don Knezek, ISTE2. Technology leadership (incl. policy history and standards alignment) - Jason Hancockand Kenneth Lane, Southeastern Louisiana University3. Technology planning and funding - Larry Anderson, National Center for TechnologyPlanning4. Technology evaluation - John Nash, Iowa State University5. Technology and staff development - Susan Brooks-Young, S. J. Brooks-YoungConsulting6. Technology and data-driven decision-making - David Quinn, University of Florida, andScott McLeod, Iowa State University7. Technology legal and ethical issues (incl. safety/security) - Justin Bathon, University of Kentucky, and Jon Becker, Virginia Commonwealth University8. Technology management and operations (using technology to run the organization) -John Alawneh, Plano (TX) Independent School District9. Classroom technology integration - Joan Hughes, University of Texas-Austin10. Online learning - Susan Patrick, iNACOL11. Using technology for effective internal and external communication - Nora Carr,Guilford (NC) County Schools12. Afterword - Keith Krueger, CoSN


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Figure 1. Visits to Educational Insanity (Sept. 1, 2009 April 21, 2010)

Journal Reviewing

I reviewed articles for two journals this year: The Journal of School Leadership(JSL) and in Education ( http://www.ineducation.ca ). I reviewed two articles for each of those journals.


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SERVICE

I spent a huge amount of my time in the 2009-10 academic year providingservice to the Educational Leadership Department, Virginia Commonwealth Universityand the community at large.

Instructional Technology Advisory Group (ITAG)

The VCU Instructional Technology Advisory Group (ITAG) is a Universitycommittee tasked with addressing issues related to faculty use of instructionaltechnology, and providing related recommendations to the Vice Provost for Instruction,Dr. Joe Marolla. I am one of only four tenure-eligible faculty on this committee.

This working group met monthly during academic year 2009-10. Through thiscommittee, Jeff Nugent and I are working on developing a vision statement that willhopefully be shared with Dr. Marolla, Dr. Warren and Dr. Rao. That statement will be

completed early in the summer, and Jeff and I hope to pitch it to decision-makers acrossthe university next academic year.

University Graduate Council (UGC)

For the second year now, I served as the School of Education representative tothe University Graduate Council (UGC). The UGC met as a whole a few times during theyear and I am also a part of the Policy and Procedures Sub-Committee. As a member of the Policy and Procedures Sub-Committee, I was able to lend my voice to a number of important issues. Specifically, that sub-committee conducted a thorough review of thegraduate bulletin to make clarifications and to look for inconsistencies.

Ph.D. Program Educational Leadership Track Coordinator

My work as the educational leadership track coordinator for the Ph.D. programoccupied a lot of my time this academic year. I attended monthly Ph.D. advisory boardmeetings, and served on the appeals subcommittee of that advisory board. Additionally,I was one of only three faculty members regularly tasked with grading the newqualifying exams and the research portions of the comprehensive exams. Finally, Ifacilitated department-level discussions about curriculum changes and exam formats.Most time-consuming of all was the work I continue to do to communicate with andadvise continuing and new doctoral students.

Additionally, as track coordinator, I: Manage the online community space for our doctoral community, Leadership

Commons Recruit new doctoral students Advise the Educational Leadership Doctoral Students Association (ELDSA)


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UCEA SIG

I continue to serve as the co-chair of the Technology and Leadership specialinterest group (SIG) of the University Council on Educational Administration (UCEA). Forthe last two years, this SIG has held a business meeting at the annual meeting of UCEA.Attendance has been terribly low, partly due to the 7:00 a.m. time slot reserved forUCEA SIG business meetings. However, the lack of attendance is mostly due to the factthat, as far as my colleagues and I can tell, there are literally a handful of professors of educational leadership in UCEA institutions (and probably elsewhere) who areconcerned with technology leadership. Thus, the major goal of the SIG is to increaseawareness among educational leadership faculty of the importance of leadership for21 st Century, technology-infused schooling. To that end, my co-chair (Dr. David Quinn,U. of Florida) and I have created an online network through NING.(seehttp://edtechleader.ning.com ). This space will be used as a storehouse of technology-related resources for school leaders and will host several electronic forums andconversations. Those are the initial goals for the networking site, but, truthfully, the

limits are seemingly boundless for what we can do with the Ning space.

Search Committees

I spent a great deal of time this year serving on two different search committees.First, I served on the search committee for the Coordinator of Doctoral Studies. Thatextensive search yielded Dr. Leslie Bozeman; an outcome that we should all be reallyproud of based on early evidence working with Dr. Bozeman. Next, I served on theDepartment of Educational Leadership faculty search committee. We conducted anexhaustive search that brought in well over 100 applications. We did interviews byvideoconference and hosted 4 on-campus, full-day interviews. This search yielded Dr.

Darius Prier who I really look forward to working with in the near and long-term future.I think both searches worked wonderfully and yielded fantastic results, but searchcommittee work is VERY time-consuming.

Faculty Learning Community

The Department of Educational Leadership was fortunate to be accepted as anexternal Faculty Learning Community (FLC) for AY 2009-10. As a department, we setaside one of our weekly meetings every month to explore uses of technology that arerelevant to our work and to the work of our students who are sitting and aspiring schoolleaders. As the facilitator of this FLC, I had to plan and lead the monthly sessions. I also

had to attend the regular meetings of FLC facilitators at the Center for TeachingExcellence. We started the year by discussing big picture questions of technology ineducation and the future of educational leadership. From there, we tied specifictechnology tools to what school leaders are expected to know and be able to do. Then,we spent the last few sessions tinkering with various Web 2.0 technologies includingRSS, social bookmarking, screencasting, etc. Truthfully, I feel that I was largely


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ineffectual in my role as FLC facilitator. However, if I at least introduced my colleaguesto some new possibilities, then theres probably some value in that.

VASCD Webinars

On a monthly basis over the course of AY 2009-10, I facilitated/lead webinarsaround issues of educational technology and school leadership. These hour-longwebinars were sponsored by the Virginia ASCD and were open to educators across theCommonwealth as well as anyone across the country (and internationally) to whom wecould get word of the events. These webinars were held through Wimba Live Classroomand were based on the following topics:

Educational Technology and School Leadership Educational Technology Legal and Ethical Issues

o Free Speech Rights of Teachers and Students in the Digital Ageo Information Privacy FERPA, FOIA, etc.o The law and ethics of Internet filtering

Technology Tools for School Leaders

Albemarle County Tech. Planning Committee

The Albemarle County Public School District is currently re-writing their divisionstechnology plan, partly because they are due for a revision and partly in response to theVirginia Department of Educations new technology plan. The leadership of this schooldivision is passionate about creating relevant, meaningful learning experiences forstudents in the 21 st Century and I was thrilled to be asked to serve as an outsidemember of their technology planning team. I attended one of the meetings of this teamface-to-face and a few of the meetings I joined by videoconference. A draft of the plan isdue within days of writing this report, and I look forward to reviewing that report as itnears completion.

New University committee on research computing

In the middle of the Spring 2010 semester, I agreed to serve on a VCUcommittee, The Research Computing Work Group. According to Dr. Frank Macrina, thisgroup is charged with:

assessing technology needs of faculty researchers identifying common requirements that could be shared across individual

researchers, departments, schools, or the University evaluating where and how well these services are currently being provided recommending opportunities for improvement

This group will evaluate general technology needs including but not limited to consultingon technical components of grants and research projects, server acquisition andsupport, database development and support, application development and support,software needs and consulting (such as survey or statistical software), and high


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performance or high bandwidth networking. The scope of this work group does not include high performance computing. The Research Computing Work Group is advisoryto the Vice President for Research and shall report its finding and recommendations tohim by September 10, 2010.

soe 2009-2010 final activity report narrative_becker_051710

Documents