A Vision is About the Possible
A vision is about the possible. It is about the future. It is about a mindset for growth. It is about facing challenges and defining a tipping point into new forms of action. In education today the tipping point becomes meeting the challenge of ensuring that every student graduate from high school ready for college and a career. To meet this challenge of ensuring that every student, including low-income students and students of color, achieve their potential, schools will need to realign their present vision by establishing new priorities linked to the new 21st Century standards. These are the standards that will prepare students for the work place of the future. To face these challenges, educational leaders must come to grips with how our learning culture is changing. It is believed we're living at the instant of the greatest change in human communication history. We now have the capability of communicating instantly globally.
A vision provides direction for the future and is associated with growth based on success data. The new challenge for educational leaders is in information consumption as literacy is redefined through connected learning experiences and in ways that students access the vast warehouses of digital content. Educational leaders will need to face these challenges by redefining digital literacy into best practices to access, curate and create content that will enhance 21st Century student learning skills. |
A Vision is About an Improved Future
A vision is not about individual perceptions of the future but about an improved future for everyone involved. A vision takes into consideration the roadblocks ahead and establishes the obstacles as obtainable to a cause of action. A vision introduces a change into action as it relates to a shift in practices. These are the recognizable changes that are occurring today as technology continues to advance by changing the learning culture. These are incremental changes in the learning culture that is not about how students learn, or about the pencils, papers, and textbooks. It is about how people are working.
People today work with laptops and word processing tools. It is not so much about going to the library or reading a textbook. It is about the workspaces; the work spaces that are changing as it becomes possible on media devices to research, not at the school library. It is how students can research the riches of the world as they're stored on the web. This is about the new libraries of consumable text. It is about the new workspaces that have created the possibility of sharing knowledge infinitely. |
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To embrace a vision of the possible, leaders must become technology savvy. They must be able to confront change by engaging in the work of the future and set a vision that will place schools at the forefront of digital learning opportunities. The vision/mission planning process should also be tied directly to the school’s central purpose of educating students and improving learning. In order for this to occur, a steering committee will need to established for the purpose of analyzing and reviewing deep beliefs about knowledge and learning and how technology can be integrated to support the vision of school improvement.
Resources
Premiers Technology Council: A Vision 21st Century Education: The purpose of this paper is to provide a vision for the K-12 education system in the 21st century. This pape does not address implementation issues but instead investigates what a system might look like should it be transformed. In the knowledge-based society of today the sheer volume of accessible information is greater than ever before and is increasing exponentially. There are also increasing expectations for more open government, education, and society. The Premier’s Technology Council has long advocated that BC take steps to prepare for this global shift.