Dr. Matt Harris, FETC 2018 presenter and moderator, is the Deputy Head of School for Learning Technology at the British School Jakarta. He has worked with schools and Ministries of Education in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North America, Australia, and Asia. He has also worked directly with over 25 international education organizations including the International Baccalaureate, accrediting agencies, and regional organizations.
Edtech leadership, worldwide, is a growing market.
The complexity of schools, the challenges of modern learning, the ever-changing nature of technology, and the perpetual need for leaders in education has created an opportunity.
However, success in edtech leadership requires a set of skills and competencies that span more areas than you’ll find in most educational leadership positions and perhaps leadership in other fields as well.
Over a series a posts, I hope to expound on the key tenets of Educational Technology Leadership as a means of helping aspiring leaders identify and fill the buckets of experience and knowledge they need to be a success.
In each post, I will go into detail about one element of edtech leadership, discussing its key components, real life examples, and ways in which to grow and develop.
These are the Tenets of Educational Technology Leadership:
- Leadership – That undefinable state of having presence, communicating, curating talent, and developing shared vision.
- Management – Keeping a finger on the systems, plans, and people needed to keep the department and school moving forward.
- Information Technology – Competencies in computing, networking, servers/clients, systems, backups, cloud services, etc.
- Educational Technology – Being a pedagog, with understanding of where technology crosses over curriculum to enhance teaching and learning at all levels.
- Systemic Thinking – Being able to see the whole forest that is a school while keeping knowledge of the trees.
- Professional Learner – A commitment and adeptness at learning for individual and organizational growth
Through the explanation of each of these tenets, I hope to show that each is reliant upon the others. Further, though they are specific skillsets all of which an individual may not possess, there are ways to build knowledge or organize an edtech team to compensate. Very few people have them all at an expert level.
As an educator and leader in current times, I hope this will be of great use to you.
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Dr. Matt Harris will present seven sessions including “Global Engagement: Using Tech to Connect Students with the World” and “How Can Technology Create Equitable Access in a Borderless Society?“. For more information on his sessions visit the FETC website here.
