My first blog entry

I am taking the next step in my technology journey by creating my own blog. I have just completed my first year as Superintendent of Education with the Peel District School Board and I have decided to use this blog to chronicle the journey of my Principals, Vice Principals, Resource staff and myself to fully integrating technology into what we do.

As a group we decided to start with our own journey first because we felt we couldn't ask teachers to radically change their practice unless we had changed ours too. As of now at all of our meetings pens and paper are not allowed. All members of our team must bring an electronic devise to meetings and all agendas, documents and presentations will be provided via technology. There will be no hard copies. Each member of our team is allowed to pick the technology device that best fits their learning style, again modeling how we will move forward into the classrooms. We have laptops, net books, I-pads, I-phones and blackberries. Whatever device fits the need that is okay.

I suppose it is important to talk about what got us to this focus. In Ontario we are a regular testing program to check on the progress of our student success plan as a Province. The testing is called EQAO and it is applied at grade 3, 6, 9, and there is a literacy test given in grade 10 that must be passed before students can be awarded their High School Diploma. The tests are based on the curriculum so provide one indication to us as educators of how well we are teaching and how well our students are learning.

A piece of data that is Province wide but particularly evident in my Superintendency is the gap in success between boys and girls. In some cases there is as much as a 40% spread. Another piece of data that also got the attention of my group is the fact that Ontario is in the top 5 for student achievement according to International tests but in the bottom 5 for engagement. How does that tie into the poor results we are seeing with our boys?

As we begun our investigation of student engagement, particularly the engagement of boys, technology continued to be raised as an instructional strategy that needed to be considered and better applied in classrooms. From there we began to look at research on the 21st century classroom and the same issue kept coming up.

I then attended the Ontario Provincial Supervisory Officer's Association conference and listened to presentations by Will Richardson and Chris Kennedy and I decided that technology had to become part of what we embraced as administrators to move our classrooms to the next level, to truly begin to prepare our students for the 21st century and to better engage our boys in the educational process.

From that moment the journey began!