Information Leadership: Managing the ICT Integration Equation

Information Leadership: Managing the ICT Integration Equation*

Lyn Hay
Lecturer, School of Information Studies,
Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia

*This article is based on a keynote address presented at the ICT Lead Schools Conference, Wellington July 2001.

Introduction
Integrating information and communication technologies (ICTs) into schools to effectively support teaching and learning experiences and streamline administration, has resulted in mixed success. For many, the challenge of an integrated whole school approach has been elusive. This paper introduces the concept of 'information leadership' and explores ways schools can fully harness the potential of ICT integration. An information leadership 'equation' considers a whole school ICT approach to information use through three key domains – information literacy, information policy and knowledge management.

While all teachers have a responsibility in contributing to the actualisation of these three domains, a school needs to clearly define its 'information leadership', that is, personnel whose task is to ensure a more balanced approach to ICT integration. This approach will be illustrated by tracking some often contentious issues in schools such as plagiarism, and managing student access to the Internet, across each of the three domains. This paper explores the 'who', 'what' and 'how' of information leadership in schools.

ICT Integration: Mixed success?
In the past decade a number of concerns regarding the effectiveness of ICT integration in schools have emerged. For many schools ICT integration has had mixed success because:

1. schools have not integrated ICTs into the school curriculum because they have not acknowledged the concurrency
    of information skills and ICT skills as stated in curriculum documents;
2. emerging technologies in some cases seems to be driving schools' ICT agendas, rather than educational outcomes;
3. the integration of ICT into the school curriculum has been hindered due to differences in information and ICT
    philosophies of key individuals in schools, notably the information (library) and computing specialists within the
    school;
4. schools have not articulated their own information vision on which to base ICT planning/management/integration;
5. with the lack of a whole school approach, the range of ICT expertise of staff can limit full integration;
6. exemplary practice is often not turned into policy, so schools are not building on the successes and lessons learned
    from those who are actually integrating ICTs;
7. a lack of opportunities for professional development, collaboration and mentoring within the workplace; and
8. a lack of information leadership in ICT integration – the majority of ICT leadership in schools is fundamentally
    pushing a technical approach, rather than an information-based integrated approach.

The discussion paper, Strategic Analysis: Improving Teaching and Learning in Australian School Education through the use of Information and Communications Technologies, prepared in April 1999 for the Schools Advisory Group of Education Network Australia (EdNA) echoes this state of play in Australian schools:

Schools at present operate largely as separate worlds. Staff work long hours and have relatively little contact with other schools and school systems. Effective transformation requires leadership and vision to connect schools in a networked age, to expose teachers to 'the bigger picture', and to work collaboratively within and outside the school. That is, leadership is needed to make the school a place which mirrors the global world environment which students will enter, and which encourages and supports students and teachers to move beyond today's physical boundaries of the school.

Strategic Analysis (1999:13)

Information leads the agenda
Information, and the management, storage, transferral and transformation of information is leading the agenda of the ‘Knowledge Age’. Schools are fuelled by information. And, in turn they create information. Schools are potentially information-rich environments. Traditionally, school organisation has separated educational or teaching/learning information, from administrative or organisational information. And while information has been a key feature of school ‘business’ for years, with the growing impact of ICTs on school life, some schools could be considered information-poor, in that they may be literally 'drowning' in the information they receive and create, rather than being able to control information flows, and use information to their advantage.

Schools need to take note of how corporations are managing themselves as information or knowledge organisations. Schools need to start thinking about information as a form of currency, and introduce mechanisms in their organisational structure to better manage the flow of information as well as the capturing of knowledge generated.

To achieve this, schools need to develop an information vision. Four very important layers (or levels) of belief should underpin this information vision – the school must view information as philosophy, skills, product and process.

This paper introduces a new way of thinking about ICT integration. It is based on the concept of an equation which is made up of the three domains of Information Literacy + Information Policy + Knowledge Management which can be managed to support an Information Leadership movement throughout a school. Think of these domains as cogs driving the engine of the school’s infrastructure – driving an information approach to supporting the educational, administrative and ICT needs of the school.

New standards for teaching and learning
Before exploring this ICT equation, firstly let us consider the principles which guide much of today's thinking in regard to standards for teaching and learning in a knowledge- or information-driven society. The following principles have been adapted from Zemelman, Daniels & Hyde (1998: 8) and Callison (2001: 58-59):

Student-centred – Considered the best starting point for schooling is students’ interests, with investigating students' own questions across the curriculum taking precedence over study of arbitrarily/distantly selected content.

Experiential – Active, hands-on, concrete experience is considered the most powerful and natural form of learning.

Holistic – The belief that children learn best when they encounter whole ideas, events, and materials in purposeful contexts.

Authentic – The conviction that real, rich, complex ideas and materials should be central to the curriculum.

Expressive – Employing a whole range of media – speech, writing, drawing, poetry, dance, drama, music, movement, and visual arts – to encourage engagement of ideas and construction of meaning.

Reflective – Students need to reflect upon and debrief on how well they have actioned, thought and learned.

Social – The belief that learning is socially constructed and often interactional, and teachers need to create classroom interactions that scaffold learning.

Collaborative – Cooperative learning activities which tap the social power of learning are preferable to an individualistic and competitive approach.

Democratic – That the classroom should model community practice, with students learning their rights, responsibilities as citizens, and ways to contribute to the community.

Cognitive – Providing students with opportunities to develop true understanding of concepts through higher-order thinking, inquiry learning and being able to self-monitor their thinking.

Developmental – The need for schooling to fit its activities to the developmental level of students.

Constructivist – Where students understand the power of creating and reinventing their own cognitive path.

Challenging – The commitment to providing students with genuine challenges and choices, and facilitating their development as responsible learners.

The principles underpinning the New Zealand Curriculum Framework (1993:7) reflect these very well, and of particular note, in regard to information leadership are the principles of:

encouraging students to become independent and lifelong learners; and
relating learning to the wider world.

It is within this context of teaching and learning that we will explore the three domains of the ICT integration equation.

Information Literacy
The United States document, Information Power (1998) was developed to support information literacy in schools and sits well within this standards framework. Information Power talks about building partnerships for learning, with collaboration, technology and leadership as the linchpins for successful integration of information and technology-based literacies. It is also pioneering in its attempts to bridge the gap between the ideologies of the two key information & ICT professional groups in US education – the American Association School Librarians (AASL) & the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). Information Power presents nine information literacy standards with 31 indicators (see Table 1) that are to be used as benchmarks of information literacy performance of students, and it also provides evidence of how information literacy standards are explicitly stated in content-area/curriculum standards.

Table 1: Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning

Category I: Information Literacy
A student who is information literate...

1. Accesses information efficiently and effectively, as described by the following indicators:
1.1 recognises the need for information;
1.2 recognises that accurate and comprehensive information is the basis for intelligent decision making;
1.3 formulates questions based on information needs;
1.4 identifies a variety of potential sources of information;
1.5 develops and uses successful strategies for locating information.

2. Evaluates information critically and competently, as described by the following indicators:
2.1 determines accuracy, relevance, and comprehensiveness;
2.2 distinguishes among facts, point of view, and opinion;
2.3 identifies inaccurate and misleading information;
2.4 selects information appropriate to the problem or question at hand.

3. Uses information effectively and creatively, as described by the following indicators:
3.1 organises information for practical application;
3.2 integrates new information into one’s own knowledge;
3.3 applies information in critical thinking and problem solving;
3.4 produces and communicates information and ideas in appropriate formats.

Category II: Independent Learning
The student who is an independent learner is information literate and...

4. Pursues information related to personal interests, as described by the following indicators:
4.1 seeks information related to various dimensions of personal well-being, such as career interests, community involvement, health matters, and recreational pursuits;
4.2 designs, develops, and evaluates information products and solutions related to personal interests.

5. Appreciates and enjoys literature and other creative expressions of information, as described by the following indicators:
5.1 is a competent and self-motivated reader;
5.2 derives meaning from information presented creatively in a variety of formats;
5.3 develops creative products in a variety of formats.

6. Strives for excellence in information seeking and knowledge generation, as described by the following indicators:
6.1 assesses the quality of the process and products of one’s own information seeking;
6.2 devises strategies for revising, improving, and updating self-generated knowledge.

Category III: Social Responsibility
The student who contributes positively to the learning community and to society is information literate and...

7. Recognises the importance of information to a democratic society, as described by the following indicators:
7.1 seeks information from diverse sources, contexts, disciplines, and cultures;
7.2 respects the principle of equitable access to information.

8. Practices ethical behaviour in regard to information and information technology, as described by the following indicators:
8.1 respects the principles of intellectual freedom;
8.2 respects intellectual property rights;
8.3 uses information technology responsibly.

9. Participates effectively in groups to pursue and generate information, as described by the following indicators:
9.1 shares knowledge and information with others;
9.2 respects others’ ideas and backgrounds and acknowledges their contributions;
9.3 collaborates with others, both in person and through technologies, to identify information problems and to seek their solutions;
9.4 collaborates with others, both in person and through technologies, to design, develop, and evaluate information products and solutions.

Extracted from: American Association School Librarians (AASL) and Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). (1998). Information power: Building partnerships for learning. Chicago: American Library Association, 8-43.

A number of information process models have also been developed to assist students in completing resource-based inquiry, and information problem-solving tasks. These process models usually articulate of a series of six to 10 steps which identify the information, problem-solving and critical thinking skills that students are required to use when engaging with information. The Big 6 Skills (Eisenberg and Berkowitz, 1988; 2001), The Information Process (ASLA/ALIA, 1993), The Research Cycle (McKenzie, 2000), and Research Process (Stripling and Pitts, 1998) are examples of these models.

Research by Carol Kuhlthau in her book Seeking Meaning (1993), provides us with an additional dimension to consider when examining students’ experiences when dealing with information – the affective domain. In her research, Kuhlthau explored students’ information seeking behaviour, and concluded that students as information seekers ‘deal’ with information on three levels:

1. how they act (the physical steps in an information process, as outlined by models such as those in Table 2);

2. how they think (the cognitive processing of information which occurs when student apply literacy, critical thinking
and problem-solving skills to an information task); and
3. how they feel (the affective, or emotional experiences they encounter when dealing with information).

With this third (affective) domain, Kuhlthau traced students’ feelings as they moved through the information seeking process, and discovered that the students experienced an incredible ‘rollercoaster ride’ of emotions as they moved through the phases of the information seeking process – from feelings of vagueness when dealing with a new topic, to feelings of confidence and assurance as they begin to hone in on their topic, and just when they think they have a ‘handle’ on their research, students can encounter feelings of uncertainty as they realise the need to rethink and refine their topic based upon new and/or conflicting information encountered, and the emergence of new ideas and perspectives. For many teachers working with students in senior secondary curriculum areas which require major research projects, Kuhlthau’s findings may well be a revelation – firstly that this affective domain exists in information users, and secondly, that it is quite ‘normal’ for an information user to feel a range of different emotions throughout the information seeking process. It is, therefore, important for teachers to understand the affective demands they place on students when setting resource-based inquiry tasks (assignments and project work). It is also important that students are made aware of the ‘affective’ (rollercoaster of feelings) they may experience as they encounter new topics, new information, conflicting information and so on. And most importantly, teachers need to assist students in developing strategies to cope with and work through each of these phases of information engagement, and the affective demands placed on them by such resource-based inquiry tasks.

Information Policy

Traditionally, schools have not been effective, or placed as a high priority, in whole school information policy development, implementation and evaluation. Many information-related issues or concerns are contentious in nature – one major reason why schools have not tackled the development of policy to capture their ‘thinking’ about, and subsequent action with regard to, such issues. Policy provides school community members with the guidance required to ensure a consistent approach in dealing with a contentious issue. With the increasing impact of ICT integration, the need for a well-articulated and understood information policy process has been brought to the fore in many schools. And the key to successful policy implementation is that this is developed and ‘owned’ by all stakeholders within the community.

Some information policy issues that affect schools include:

Copyright § Disputed materials
Digital copyright, licensing, caching § Filtering
Student access to the Internet, AUP § Privacy
Plagiarism § Email
Information literacy § Web publishing
Intellectual property § Intranet, personal space
ICT integration

How many of these are currently being addressed in your school, and are supported by a formal policy?

Many of these policy issues are not ‘standalone’ issues. How your school deals with one issue may have ramifications for how you deal with other issues. Don’t try to deal with all of these issues at one time, and in one policy… it won’t work.

Many schools may have developed an AUP and may have a copyright policy hidden somewhere in a filing cabinet (unfortunately in some schools, these may be photocopies of another school’s policy document with the name of that school whited out and replaced with their own!). Very few schools have taken action to address information issues through a formal policy process.

When looking at such contentious information issues, one can see that some of these may reflect our view of information literacy and ICT integration as articulated in Standard 8 of Information Power (1998: 36-37), where a student:

…practices ethical behaviour in regard to information and information technology, as described by the following indicators:

8.1 respects the principles of intellectual freedom;
8.2 respects intellectual property rights;
8.3 uses information technology responsibly.

Knowledge Management
As people come and go from workplaces, organisations are faced with three fundamental knowledge management (KM) problems:

1. trapping the knowledge of the those outgoing community members;
2. welcoming new community members to a knowledge sharing culture; and
3. maintaining a knowledge sharing culture.

The knowledge management movement emerged in the late 1990s as a direct result of an information-driven economy. In this climate, information is viewed as an asset, or currency, that can contribute to an organisation’s success. Previously, corporations have viewed money as the key to success, however, knowledge is now being valued as a great contributor to success. By using an organisation’s knowledge more effectively it is believed to contribute to competitive advantage. Since 1998 the private research company, Teleos, in the US has completed an annual study called the ‘Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE)’. This study comprises of a survey sent to the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Technology/Information Officer of each of the Fortune Global 500 companies, as well as 300 KM ‘experts’ from throughout the world. Respondents are asked to nominate a maximum of three knowledge-based organisations (including non-profit and public sectors) worldwide, and then to rate them (from a scale of 1-10) against eight key knowledge performance dimensions. These include:

Success in establishing an enterprise knowledge culture

Top management support for managing knowledge

Ability to develop and deliver knowledge-based goods/services

Success in maximising the value of the enterprise’s intellectual capital

Effectiveness in creating an environment of knowledge sharing

Success in establishing a culture of continuous learning

Effectiveness of managing customer knowledge to increase loyalty/value

Ability to manage knowledge to generate shareholder value.

(Chase, 2000: 4-5)

Governments are now encouraging the education sector to translate such performance dimensions within the school context. This makes sense, as schools are in the business of knowledge creation and information generation, and can learn from corporations as how to best manage their collective knowledge. To get started, here are some key KM questions to ask about your school:

How well are training programs adjusted to continually changing needs?
How effectively do teachers share their accumulated wisdom, experiences and skills?
How common is it for teachers to mentor younger, or less experienced teachers?
Are there strong specialist networks within and across schools, sharing knowledge and experience?
Are there continuing experiments and explorations to find better ways of teaching and running schools?
Are we effectively learning from the different models and approaches to education?
Is the community effectively involved in helping the school to be relevant to community needs?
Are we effectively using the whole range of skills and knowledge of our staff? Do we even know what these are?
Are we effectively using the whole range of skills and knowledge of our students?

(Southon, 1999)
You will find that most of these activities are not new. Knowledge management is not so much about adding new tasks to an existing workload, it is more a way of seeing them all linked together and supporting each other in a more holistic and integrated way. As mentioned earlier in this paper, regarding the links between information policy issues and information literacy, knowledge management (as the third domain contributing to the ICT equation) is more about everyone in the school being more conscious of the importance of knowledge, the contribution that it makes to the success of the school as an organisation, and what needs to be done to ensure that it is used effectively, and how each person contributes to the bigger picture.

Organisations have found that one of the biggest impediments to using knowledge effectively is the lack of sharing, where people are either reluctant to share, or don’t make sufficient effort to share. In some cases people feel threatened that they may lose their powerbase if they give away too much information to others, thus causing a waste in time due to duplication of effort and tasks (and re-inventing the wheel). One of the great myths in regard to the introduction of technologies designed to streamline communication and information flows within an organisation, is that this will help generate a ‘more sharing culture’. Often people complain that such technologies don’t work properly, when if fact, it is the ‘people dynamic’ that is ‘broke’.

Holloway's article ‘Guess what George is taking with him: How to protect knowledge from walking out the door’ (1999) presents a timely lesson for leaders of organisations. What knowledge is lost when a member of your staff leaves your school? Have they taken information about your school that few others know about, or fully understand, or is not documented for those left behind?

Just how a knowledge management approach can contribute to effective management of the collective of ideas, expertise, skills, programs and resources in schools is now emerging with the introduction of intranets. Bill Communications (2000) identifies five types of technologies designed to support knowledge management in organisations:

     1. applications for capturing information;
     2. applications for cataloguing and storing information;
     3. applications for transforming information;
     4. applications for disseminating information; and
     5. applications for securing information.

Each of these types of technologies can be found in schools, and while beyond the scope of this paper, a detailed exploration of the first four ‘types’ of software supporting knowledge management in schools, including the main features and functionality of appropriate groupware applications, can be found in the paper, ‘Groupware as a knowledge management tool: Possibilities for schools’ (Hay and Eustace, 2000).

Information Leadership
Information leadership involves managing people and knowledge across curriculum and administration, and can support a more balanced approach to ICT-related issues. Many information issues are contentious and require negotiation of all stakeholders within a school community. Implementation of policy must be consistent, reinforced and evaluated.

This paper proposes that information issues, if tracked across each of the three domains of information literacy, information policy and knowledge management, can lead to effective ICT integration within and across the school. The issues of plagiarism and student access to the Internet are tracked (below) across each of the three domains to illustrate the breadth and depth of some information issues within a school setting.

Example 1: Plagiarism
When dealing with the problem of student plagiarism, a school can address this issue from a number of angles. Firstly through the information literacy domain, where:

the ‘copy & paste’ mentality of students is combated by teachers demanding students to complete tasks that require ‘deep thinking’;
teachers provide students with a range of strategies to record information in their own words;
where the school’s information specialist provides teachers and students with guidelines to cite sources and compile reference lists; and
active learning and authentic assessment principles underpin student projects and information tasks.

Secondly, plagiarism can be supported within an information policy framework, where:

a school-based plagiarism policy articulate the expectations of staff and student use of other people’s words and products;
the issue of plagiarism is also reinforced in the schools’ assessment, copyright & web publishing policies;
guidelines regarding intellectual property/copyright policy statements are clearly displayed near photocopiers, computer, and multimedia/video equipment;
the school’s plagiarism policy clearly identifies both the educational and legal reasons/implications for such guidelines; and
the school’s information specialist provides regular updates of new legislation regarding digital information, copyright and intellectual property.

And thirdly, plagiarism can be supported within the domain of knowledge management, where the school:

develops a policy to protect the intellectual property generated by its community members
includes a copyright statement on its website (for information available by the general public, as well as information published in the intranet)
develops a watermark for school-based documentation/resources that is created and shared beyond the school community (eg. to other schools within the district, region, or state)
develops a database of school-based documentation, including curriculum resources, units of work, policy statements, guidelines and procedures, working papers, charters of workgroups and minutes of meetings, etc; and
where the school disseminates updates to teachers, parents and students regarding strategies to avoid plagiarism, protect intellectual property and abide by copyright regulations.

Example 2: Student Internet access
When dealing with problems associated with the management of student access to the Internet, a school can also address these issues across all three domains. Firstly through the information literacy domain, where students are equipped with:

strategies to access, evaluate, and record information;
skills to create and publish information products;
opportunities to develop skills in communicating with others;
an understanding of netiquette and Internet ethics;
an understanding of how to assess their own skills development/ performance in completing information tasks; and
the ability to assess the quality/effectiveness/appropriateness of own information products.

Here we must consider issues regarding physical as well as intellectual access to the Internet. Many of the physical issues can usually be addressed within the policy domain, however, much of the intellectual access issues are more appropriately considered within an information literacy framework.

Students need to be armed with strategies to access, evaluate, record information, and the skills necessary to create and publish information products. Evaluating information critically and competently has become more important than ever for students using web-based resources as they need to:

determine accuracy, relevance, and comprehensiveness of the information;
distinguish between what is fact, someone's point of view, or opinion; and
identify what is inaccurate and misleading information.

Students need to be given opportunities to develop skills to communicate with others online, and respecting netiquette, or life as an ‘online citizen’. They need to be able to assess their own performance in information seeking, and assess the quality of their information or product generation, as a contributor to either online dialogue (eg. bookrap posts, chat transcripts), or publisher of digital portfolios, webpages, multimedia clips and artwork. The facility to archive and access student work that has been generated electronically can provide students with the opportunity revisit, revise and build on previous intellectual input, and support student development as reflective practitioners and independent learners.

Secondly, managing student access to the Internet can be supported within an information policy framework, where a school articulates a consistent approach regarding:

access to and availability of ICT tools and services;
expectations, rights and responsibilities as clearly stated in acceptable use policy guidelines;
provision of student storage, ie. disks versus filespace;
free versus directed Web searching, and what filtering and caching standards are employed;
student safety and privacy;
the educational and legal ramifications of breaching copyright of digital resources; and
Web publishing guidelines for both materials to be made publicly available via the Internet and/or intranet.

And thirdly, student Internet access can be supported within the domain of knowledge management, where the school:

manages intranet & Intranet publishing;
archives staff and student work;
provides remote access to staff and students from their homes;
manages individual student email accounts;
disseminates information to parents, eg. providing access to student records/progress;
creates a registry of staff and student ICT expertise; and
where the school maintains a registry of disputed materials, AUP policy breaches, etc.

The breadth of issues, with regard to plagiarism and student Internet access, across each of the three domains is extensive, and while schools may consider some of these in practice, rarely have schools developed to policies that fully articulate the breadth and interrelatedness of these issues. An information leadership approach to tracking such issues across the domains of information literacy, information policy and knowledge management provides one method of dealing with an information issue in a comprehensive manner, as well as strengthening the prospect of effective ICT integration.

Information Leadership: A New Era
Reached information overload yet? Most schools have! And who manages the implementation of these issues, policies, programs, strategies and information flows? An information leader. A person who has:

a whole school information philosophy;
understands the core issues of student learning and professional development;
whose understanding of technology, is not necessarily technical, but rather a technological vision; and
one who interprets educational and administration needs into technological solutions.

The second and fully revised edition of Learning for the Future (ASLA/ALIA, 2001) has just been released as the recommended national standard in the delivery of information services in schools, and the appendix presents role statements for information-related positions in schools including Director of Information Services, Teacher Librarian, ICT Coordinator, Network Manager, and support staff such as Library Technician, Computer Technician, and Clerical Assistant/Library Officer (ASLA/ALIA, 2001: 59-66). This will be useful for those schools with such positions already in place.

However, in the past two years, commentators in educational administration, and library and information science, have been debating the need for a position in schools to manage the effective integration of ICTs. As Baule (2001: 218) states:

Leadership is probably one of the key components of technology policy within a school district or other educational organization. However, in many ways, instructional technology leadership has not done a good job of keeping up with technology. As technology continues to expand its role within the school, the responsibility for providing leadership for technology is often dispersed among many administrators. However, in many schools no one represents the interests and possibilities of technology at the executive level. So, the first policy issue that should be addressed in most schools, is the issue of technology leadership.

As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, for some schools the technical agenda of ICT integration has remained the driving force, which in many cases has not reaped the educational rewards across the curriculum that governments, educational systems, principals, teachers, and parents had hoped. For many schools ICT integration has resulted in mixed success.

While positions of ‘Director of Technology’ (or ‘IT Curriculum’), or ‘Director of Information Services’ were introduced in a number of schools in Australia (as well as tertiary institutions), one of the main problems with these positions is that two separate groups of stakeholders still exist within the schools, ie. both IT coordination teams, and library resource centre teams. Few schools have taken steps to merge these units as this staffing issue has been far too contentious for many schools to tackle head on.

Educational administrators, Lee, Gaffney and Schiller (2001) have also been critical of ICT leadership in schools to date, as the following observation clearly illustrates:

…technical staff have an inordinate and inappropriate impact on the educational agenda. Our experience is that a large proportion of the network managers and ICT coordinators are… preoccupied with the technical agenda, and use that agenda to shape their educational decision making; strongly influenced by the capacity of the latest technology; lacking in people management training and experience; convergent thinkers, focusing on the best technical solution; lacking a strong macro understanding of the workings of schools and how the ICT can be used to enhance the quality of education or educational support; in a situation where their control of ICT provides them standing and often their power base in the segmented organisation; often inhibiting the integrated use of ICT and alienating staff.

Baule (2001: 219) believes that because there is the potential for technology to span across all of the facets of the organisation, a ‘director’ of ICT should be at the highest level of the organisation below that of a school’s superintendent or school principal, and compares this leadership with that of a chief technology or information officer among the executive leadership of corporations:

Much of what this person needs to be able to do is to interpret educational needs into technological solutions. Often, teachers ask for specific technology solutions to a perceived need. It is the need of the technology staff to work with the teacher to determine the real need and the most appropriate solution to the problem whether or not it includes a technology component to the solution.

Such commentators are calling for greater leadership opportunities in schools to ensure more effective ICT integration. The model of information leadership presented in this paper is one potential solution in improving the ICT integration equation in schools, where the management of information- and ICT-related issues occurs across the three domains of information literacy, information policy and knowledge management. Where the school’s information leader becomes a manager of change; is sensitive to contentious issues requiring negotiation of all stakeholders; has the ability to manage people, knowledge, technology and finance across both curriculum and administration; and can lead the policy development process.

While many education systems and schools may not be able to introduce an executive position of ‘Chief Information Officer’ as part of the staffing formula tomorrow, a team of existing staff lead by the school principal, or a teacher with an information specialist background could be a useful point of departure. It would be the task of this team to drive an information approach to supporting the educational, administrative and ICT needs of the school. Where ICTs are used in classrooms to support the development of the information literacy standards as reflected in the curriculum. To manage the process of ‘shoring up’ a school’s policies to address a consistent, whole school approach to contentious information issues. And to improve the way the school ‘does business’, by adopting knowledge management principles and practices.

How is your school managing the ICT integration equation?

References

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Computers in New Zealand Schools, 13(3), Nov: 5-12. [Online]
http://ispg.csu.edu.au/subjects/ictexp/readings/hay
Updated 13 August 2002 specifically for educational purposes
for ETL411 and ETL511 ICT Experience for TLs