School Technology Leadership Courses
- Interested in these courses? Fill out our online form and we’ll be back in touch as soon as you can register for them (should be sometime in Fall 2009).
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 Iowa State University and it was a phenomenal experience.
In Spring 2010 (a year later than originally planned), CASTLE will begin offering its online school technology leadership courses again, this time here at ISU!
The School Technology Leadership program
We will offer six 2–credit courses over the course of a calendar year (3 semesters):
- 21st Century Leadership (spring)
- Technology Integration and Staff Development (spring)
- Technology Planning and Operations (summer)
- Technology, Data, and Schools (summer)
- Technology Law, Policy, and Ethics (fall)
- Current Issues in Technology Leadership (fall)
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 aligned with the new NETS-A (due out in June 2009). 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 ISU, we are working to make these courses into a 12–credit graduate certificate program!
More information
Iowa State University is one of the leading research universities in the country and is a member of the AAU. ISU is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
These are Master's-level credits suitable for education licensure renewal. They also may be suitable as transfer credits for ISU'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 Development Distinguished Teaching Award.
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?
