Guest Commentary: Scott MCLeod Wonders Whether the Educational Faculty Leadership Is Irrelevant to the Digital,

Scott McLeod is an associate professor of Educational Administration at Iowa State University and the director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). In the Summer 2011 issue of the University Council for Educational Administration Review, McLeod wrote a thought-provoking article challenging
many of the tightly-held beliefs of education administrators.
"We no longer live in an information push-out world where we passively receive information that is broadcast out to us by large, centralized entities. Instead, we now live within multi-directional conversation spaces in which 15-year-olds can reach audiences at scales that previously were reserved for major media companies, large corporations, and governments. We all now can have a voice," McLeod wrote.
"We all now can be publishers. We all now can find each other’s thoughts and ideas and can share, cooperate, collaborate, and take collective action. Time and geography are no longer barriers to communicating and working together. Of course these changes also have
resulted in dramatic impacts on learning. Students and educators now have access to all of the information in their textbooks—and an incredible wealth of primary documents—for free. They have access to robust, low-cost or no-cost, and often multimedia and interactive learning resources (texts, images, audio, video, games, simulations) that can supplement, extend, or even replace what is being taught in their classrooms. Via collaborative Internet-based tools such as blogs, wikis, videoconferencing, and social networks, they can learn from and with students and teachers in other states or countries. They also can quickly and easily connect with authors, artists, business professionals, entrepreneurs, physicians, craftsmen, professors, and other experts.
"If it is difficult to overstate the technological disruptions that are occurring around us, it is equally difficult to understate the lack of progress that most schools have made in response to these overarching societal changes," McLeod argued.
"While students 'power up [at home, they] power down every time they go to class,' " McLeod added.
Click here to read the complete essay and why McLeod says given the scale and scope of the transformations occurring, educational leadership faculty must do better and embrace change.