Technology Site Reviews

Over time with the help of others I've built a series of questions that may be used for reviewing the infrastructure, technology curriculum, staff development, funding, administrative issues, and vision within a Lutheran school. I continue to hone this process with each visit to a Lutheran school, hopefully finding improved ways to help support the work of technology integration through the Lutheran community. With another site visited yesterday, I was spurred to create a list of observations about the state of technology in Lutheran schools:

• We are VERY blessed at Shepherd of the Hills to have to have the quality of infrastructure, curriculum, and staff development which we have. I am VERY thankful for the opportunity to serve here.
• Those of us who are blessed in this way have a responsibility to our sister schools throughout the country to do what we can to aid and support them in their work. If we don't do this, we are merely a collection of schools which share the designation "Lutheran" rather than a true united system. The failure of just one school hurts us all.
• So many schools don't seem to understand how far behind they really are and fail to treat the issue of technology in education with the urgency that it deserves. These schools remind me of those organizations who are taking the slow march toward death mentioned in the recent book Deep Change. Many of these schools need to fully embrace deep change in teaching and learning rather then mere incremental alterations in order to be educationally relevant in the coming years.
• There are so many creative teachers in Lutheran schools who are ready to break through and engage students in innovative ways, if only they trusted the technology infrastructure at their school to support this.

So where does that leave us? Frantically working to support each other so that we continue to have students with which to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.