ICT Leadership for Education Managers

Learning Pathways

These materials are designed to be as flexible as possible. It is possible to separate individual modules, workshops and even activities and in so doing, create a customised course to suit your specific needs. The Microsoft education representative or an assigned training agency could help you to design your own course outline in this way.

Broad course structure

• Module 1 is now a separate course called ICT Skills for Principals. It deals with ICT skills that principals could use in their contexts as principals. It is included for the benefit of courses where the development of ICT skills has been identified as a need. Email is not included specifically because it is integrated into every module and workshop.
• Module 2 focuses on giving the principal an understanding of what teachers can do with ICT. It does encourage the principal to reflect on his/her own role in supporting teachers to gain competence with ICT.
• Module 3 focuses on what principals can do in their schools to manage ICT and provide information leadership.

Recommendations for learning pathways

• If the principals' ICT skills are weak and you want to include module 1, each individual scenario in this module could take up to 2 hours and this module as a whole could take two days to complete. In this case you should rather separate this module from the leadership course as a whole.
• If you want to focus on leadership and management, module 3 could be presented on its own as a two-day course.
• If you want to build a depth of understanding of ICT in the classroom, and ICT professional development opportunities, module 2 can be presented as a one day workshop.
• If you want to include depth of understanding prior to focusing on leadership and management issues, modules 2 and 3 can be presented as a three-day course.
• If you are only able to provide training for short durations of time (2-3 hours ) consider individual workshops.
• We would recommend that you include the following in all courses of one or more days duration:
  • 15 minute introductory video
  • A visual ranking exercise on the roles that a principal can play in providing ICT leadership (workshop 2-1-1) at the beginning (45 minutes)
  • A final reflection (workshop 3-4-3) on change (30 min)
• If you want to focus on information leadership, a two and a half hour workshop can be constructed from workshops 3-1-2 (Information leadership), 3-2-1 (Information Literacy) and 3-4-1 (Knowledge Management).
• If you want to focus on curriculum-related ICT management, workshop 3-3 can be run as a two and a half hour workshop.
• If you want to focus on information management-related ICT policy, workshop 3-2 can be run as a three and a quarter hour workshop.
• Because some workshops and activities have been specifically mentioned above does not mean that the other workshops and activities are any less valuable. Read the workshop summaries, discuss your course with stakeholders and design the workshop to suit your needs.