1-to-1 Leadership, Vision, Support, Sustainability

This is my current rumination - how does leadership envision, support, and sustain 1-to-1 in particular and technology in general. Lately I've been reading and editing things for various purposes and organizations and am struck how often technology is an add-on. Something to include, it seems, if the teacher has time, or maybe as a "supplement" - showing some Web sites to kids, let's say.

But now we have Web 2.0 and now we have 1-to-1 and now we have the opportunities and the vehicles for technology to truly be ubiquitous in classrooms in terms of not just hardware, but in terms of creating content that is potentially seen by nearly anyone. We should be thinking of technology in broader strokes now because the means and the possibilities exist to take our classrooms so much further than before in terms of technology infusion and fluency.

That does mean leadership needs to step up to the plate in terms of the vision, the support, and the means and resources to sustain technology. But what does this vision look like, what are its attributes, how then to lead when teachers are at different starting points, are teaching different disciplines, and when expectations and the technology itself seem to continually shift.

The statistics say that students are learning about technology at home and not in school and colleges are finding their incoming freshmen are less prepared than they expected, so are assigning them to remedial technology classes.

Visionary, supportive leadership is vitally important to the success of educational technology everywhere so that this generation of children can step up to the plate when it's their turn at bat.