A wonderful old soldier I knew had a favorite story he liked to tell. Like most stories we hear as children, this one got lodged in the back of my brain and resurfaces every once in awhile. I can hear him in his Southern drawl begin...A young man asked the old warrior - "Sir, how did you get all those men to follow you up over that hill into direct fire?" The warrior replied with a twinkle - "Well now, son. Did you ever try to push a string?" .
The moral of the story, of course, is that you can't push a string, you have to pull it. This story popped into my mind as I begin working with Principals on integrating technology into their schools to help students prepare for their lives and careers in the 21st Century.
Principals have to lead from the top. They can not expect their teachers to embrace technology without actually embracing it themselves. I think of a school as a single learning community, with all members collaborating and interacting on a daily basis. Principals must lead from the top, but without input from all members of the learning community, bottom-up with student input and student-generated ideas, as well as middle-up & down input from all us teachers in the middle, true technology integration that directly impacts student learning can not take place.
Most principals are "digital immigrants" (Marc Prensky) to the multimodal world of today's students. We remember a time when today's technology didn't exist -- a time before personal computers, when you needed a phone booth to make a telephone call, when fax machines were the latest innovation. Times have changed rapidly and dramatically. It take courage to come to a new technologically- enhanced country, learn a new techno-language and assimilate into the new techno-culture. It feels funny to be slightly off the beat when everyone else is moving forward. So I applaud my first cohort of Principals and look forward to working with them. After all, why should the kids be the only ones having fun?!
I've created a new category, "iLead Principals" on the right which contains specific resources towards helping Principals "bridge the digital divide". You are welcome to share its resources.
One last word about the string story. Perhaps, it's just an old yarn! Okay, okay, I'll stop!