7 Ways for Leaders to Stay on Top of Tech

For Leadership Day 2010, many in the educational arena took Scott McLeod's challenge to create a blog post on leadership. Though my contribution is being posted two days later I wish to offer it as a support to school leaders in their quest to incorporate the best that technology has to offer to our students. It is a best practice for education professionals to keep up on changes and news in the their field. The same is true for leaders of any  field. In education, as in any field, there are many excellent resources for doing so. In spite of that, many express that keeping up with technology is difficult or even impossible. Technology changes impact all segments of society.

Visionary Leadership

If we are to provide engaging 21st century classrooms and if we are to practice Visionary Leadership as outlined in (Nets-A) in schools, it is helpful to keep an eye on technology changes to see what is on the horizon. By staying up on the latest tech news, we can then think about how those changes might impact our students and our schools. Planning groups and teachers can benefit as well. Below I offer a few technology news sites that are continually updated on news, research and new releases. I add some tool supports and questions to consider when hearing about new changes in technology on the horizon. Think about adding some to your reading list.  To do so, you can simply visit websites, add them to your blog reader or follow them on youtube or on twitter. Set up a Google Reader if you don't have one already. You can even set up a separate folder entitled Visionary Leadership, if you wish. Whatever you decide to do, staying on top of changes in the technology field can act as a crystal ball into changes that impact us all. Also, please feel free to suggest some others to follow.

7 Tech News Sources to Follow

1. Mashable - News.  There are categories for Mobile Technology, Social Media and others. Add separate feeds for each as desired. RSS, Twitter
2. Tech Crunch -Group edited Tech Blog RSS, Twitter
3. Wired - Technology News, Reviews and How to's.  Rss - (many to choose from) , Twitter
4. Gizmodo Guide to Gadgets - RSS, Twitter
5. Tech Land -Gaming  on Twitter
6. ZdNet - Tech News, Analysis and Reviews - Youtube, Twitter
7. New York Times - Technology Choice of Rss Feeds

Tool Supports

1. Blogs 101
2. Getting Started with Google Reader
3. Setting Up a Twitter Account
4. Getting Started with Twitter

Questions to Ask About Technology Trends

1. What impact could this have on current systems? on people in general?
2. How could this impact me, my school or organization?
3. How can my school or organization benefit from this?
4. How should we be planning for this type of shift?

These are my suggested Tech News Sites and Blogs for Leaders.  What would you add to this list?