Digital Leadership: Increasing Student Engagement and Enhancing Learning

Digital leadership should be a mindset to transform school culture to prepare students for the real world.  Students want to be creative, collaborate and utilize technology to learn and connect to the world around them.  Using technology will help the students to find more connection and meaning to what they are leaning. For educators, it is a movement toward Education 3.0, a heutagogical approach to teaching and learning.  This approach moves students to be highly autonomous and self-determined. The emphasis is placed on development of learner capacity and capability with the goal of producing learners who are well-prepared for the complexities of today’s workplace.  Bottom line, it creates life-long learners. 

To create life-long learners, students need to have the ability to and be allowed to use the technology tools to apply what they have learned and to construct new knowledge.  The level of use needs to build on the pedagogical framework.  The center of the framework should be the student who is active in the process instead of the teacher being the active member. 

Eric Sheninger’s book reviews a frame work for digital tools in chapter 9. In the Monological Teaching form,the teacher is the expert of the subject.  He/she distributes the information to the student at the level determined to be relevant to the student.  The student learns what the teacher feels is important.  In the Dialogical Teaching form, the teacher chooses the subject matter for the student to work through to define and solve problems.  If the student does not have enough information, the teacher acts as a supervisor to help the student gain the information he/she needs. In Polyphonic Teaching form, the teacher and student jointly selects the subject matter. The idea is that knowledge is created through exchange of ideas and perception of many individuals.  

The use of technology expands the tools available for teachers and students, being able to connect to others around the world, to share ideas and to embrace learning from more than just the teacher. Blended learning is important part to make learning relevant to the students, increasing levels of student engagement, increasing retention and prepare them for the 21^st century. Students should be able to use Skype to connect to others outside the four walls they sit in daily.  Use Twitter hash-tags to share the ideas with others.  Classrooms should mobile learning devices (BYOD) to expand on the tools available for the students. Schools need to seek to move to 1:1 for computers.  Teachers should move to create learner-led environments to seed the life-long learner.

With the on-growth of technology, districts must be pro-active in establishing policies to make the programs a success.  Schools should address digital citizenship programs to guide students through the positives and negatives of the world-wide web.  Districts need to create a strong responsible use policy and insure it is followed.

These ideas will help prepare our students for what employers are looking for as job essentials – creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, global awareness, entrepreneurism along with having technological proficiency and being aware of a positive digital footprint. It will empower the students to take more control of their learning and be responsible for their learning.