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CASE STUDY 1

REFLECTIONS OF A NEW HAMPSHIRE SUPERINTENDENT AND PRINCIPAL

Time, tools, and training three critical, inextricably linked concepts, necessary to move a
school district forward. As technology becomes more and more interwoven into the fabric of everyday
life, schools need to provide the time, tools, and training to utilize technology to improve the efficiency
and effectiveness of all aspects of schooling. At the same, time schools must be careful not to replace core
practices with technological replacements simply because they are less expensive or the next big thing.
Successfully implementing technological improvements with efficacy to a school districts core mission
and values is the land of critical mass. It is the noble pursuit in the Hopkinton School District.

From the district perspective, technology has been interwoven into every aspect of district operations.

Communication: From community and parent email listservs, to wiki websites used to track and
receive feedback on committee work, to screencasts that allow particular nuances of a subject to
be explained, to posting school board audio recordings on the website, to an automatic call
system: technology as enhanced communication with the community.

Collaboration: From utilizing Google documents to develop a policy, technology plan, or project
work to document sharing with the executive assistant, to Skyping in an administrator home
with an ill child to a meeting, technology has enhanced collaboration.

Operations: From a budget program that supports off-site purchase order approval and easy
report production, to a professional development management tool which tracks activities by
goal, to the approval, tracking, and revision of federal grant monies: web-based applications
have increased operational efficiency exponentially.

Data-based decision-making: From gap analyses by subgroup on the state test, to high-quality
self-adjusting assessments, to understanding each students Lexile to support reading selection,
to making just-in-time student information available to focus intervention planning: technology
has enhanced the past practice of decision by anecdote by including data.

From a school perspective, it is important that we utilize technology to force greater efficiency.
Technology must do more than raise the bar for our work; it has to create time so that we can be
more effective and have more time for instruction. Teaching is still a contact sport.

With a relatively simple technology infrastructure, principals complete classroom observations


with laptops and iPads and feedback is sent instantly to the teacher via email. While deeper
conversations must still occur face to face, teachers and administrators can exchange details such as
schedules and meeting minutes via email with important faculty documents housed on a wiki. Instead of
staff meetings dominated by minutiae, technology is used to communicate everything that doesnt need
discussion so that staff meetings can be primarily utilized for professional development.

Parent communication has reached the 21st century in Hopkinton. Harold Martin School
completes a monthly podcast for parents utilizing a new digital media studio funded primarily through
grant funds. While led primarily by the principal, the podcast includes contributions from students and
teachers. Parents feel more connected via a podcast versus the traditional weekly newsletter sent home
in student backpacks. One school utilizes a Twitter account to remind parents of timely information.

Classrooms throughout the district utilize interactive white boards, which have begun to
revolutionize feedback of content understanding between the student and teacher. Through interactive
Quick Response systems, students are able to quickly inform the teacher on their level of understanding
of a particular concept. It seems unfathomable that we ever taught geometry without this incredible tool.
Even the primary grade teachers are beginning to utilize laptops and computer projector technology,
which allows them to conjure up a thought and be able to express it through the wide range of the
Internet.

Want to take a course that is not offered in your school, such as a higher-level calculus class or a
world language such as Mandarin Chinese? One can utilize a virtual school such as our own in New
Hampshire called Virtual Learning Academy Charter School. While the offices for VLACS are located
in Exeter, the school is located wherever a computer, tablet, or smartphone device and a wireless
connection exist.

Time is the currency of school improvement. Technology has the power to simultaneously
improve all aspects of schooling while forcing increased efficiency. The increasing efficiency allows more
time to focus on the leadership and substantive change. However, it is essential that technology be seen
as a tool that exists to serve the educational values we hold dear. It can never be an entity unto itself.

Source: William V. Carozza is the principal of the Harold Martin School in Hopkinton, New
Hampshire, and a nationally known digital age technology user of social networking tools for
educational communications and improvement. Steven M. Chamberlin is the superintendent of schools
in Hopkinton School District and a doctoral student at the University of New Hampshire, studying
leadership and policy development.

Reference:

Garland, V. E., Chester, T. (2013) Educational leadership and Technology: Preparing school
administrators for a digital age. Routledge, p.51-53

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