Dive Brief:

• In a Tuesday session at the Future of Education Technology Conference, Seymour Community School District (WI) Instructional Technology Coach Jenna Linskens discussed how administrators can nurture future-ready schools.

• Over the course of the two-hour session, Linskens detailed how it's the responsibility of tech leaders and administrators to foster tech engagement from the "pockets of innovation" that exist among peers, even as there’s pressure to teach to tests and prepare for high-stakes assessments, noting, “That spark might not spread very fast, but it will spread.”

• Administrators can leverage the Future Ready Schools framework to establish a vision for students and learning that drives decisions around making schools future-ready, based on careful consideration of where schools have been in the past, where they are now, and where the world is going.

Dive Insight:

For many schools, becoming future-ready is more than just a matter of getting the right tech in place. Classrooms in an older building might lack the requisite number of electrical outlets and wiring and other infrastructure, for example. The future classroom needs flexibility so it can be easily reconfigured based on the work students and teachers doing, Linskens said. And gaining buy-in across all faculty members beyond the "pockets of innovation" can still be a hurdle, as well.

Being future-ready will also require greater flexibility for students, giving them options between, say, doing a PowerPoint or slide deck or using another tool that helps facilitate educators' shift from being “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side.” There should be times where you can let go and let students be the experts.

For more on becoming a Future Ready Administrator and the four key focus areas that come with it (collaborative leadership, personalized student learning, robust infrastructure and personalized professional learning), principals can find resources here.