How Your
Nominee Has Shown Leadership Successfully Implementing Technology into
Instruction?
Roger Pryor has consistently demonstrated outstanding
technology leadership, enhancing positive educational change within the Hunter
& Central Coast Region (HCC) of the NSW Department of Education and
Training (DET), across regions including South Western Sydney Region (SWSR),
across the state and nationally, over an extensive timeframe. His technology leadership has been and
continues to be transformational as he makes decisions based on a broad
perspective, organisational and systemic vision, group goals, personal belief,
group and individual need, and network development.
Roger clearly identifies and articulates vision, fosters
acceptance of group goals, has extremely high performance expectations relating
to self and others, provides and expounds appropriate models and scaffolds,
utilises and cultivates the expertise of others, provides intellectual
stimulation and develops a robust culture based around “Connect, Collaborate,
Create” which facilitates “Planning School.” Within his leadership he displays
a strong sense of moral purpose, an understanding of the dynamics of change, a
high degree of emotional intelligence as he builds and fosters relationships, a
commitment to developing and sharing new knowledge and a capacity for coherence
making. In particular within vision and
moral purpose he is an ethical leader who aligns vision and purpose to
strategic initiatives and sees leadership as a way of being.
Roger has powerful reciprocal relationships across
all areas with all people focusing on collective and relational leadership and
participation. He has an exceptional cognitive and creative capacity as a
leader, successfully operating within highly complex systems and situations,
thus demonstrating the importance of perspective and multiple frames for
versatility, strategic decision making and situational leadership. He
profitably transforms leaders and cultures, cultivates leaders as change agents
and uses organisational learning as a response to change. Roger focuses his leadership on systems
thinking, on personal mastery, on strong mental models, on building a shared
vision and team learning.
The next sections of my nomination for Roger Pryor
will be concerned with how his leadership as described above interfaces with
change and technology to maximise the potential for effective use of technology
in instruction. Specifically, Roger Pryor
is a School Education Director (SED) in the Hunter & Central Coast Region
(HCC) for the NSW Department of Education and Training (NSWDET). In this role
he is responsible for the development of ICT skills and literacy for over 100
000 students, 8 500 teachers and approximately 300 schools. He is also
accountable for the ICT professional learning of these teachers to ensure
learning within the 300 schools incorporates efficient and successful use of
web2.0 tools enabling students to be effective participants in the both current
and future global economies. He has
developed two websites http://hccweb2.org
and www.pryorcommitment.com
Within these sites he captures and demonstrates his vision for student
success within a framework for 21st century learning. His work highlights that
key skills for success in the world today, such as critical thinking, problem
solving, communication and collaboration, can and should be infused within
technology educational initiatives. On
the http://hccweb2.org site you will see:
1. Moodle COWs - examples of Moodle in use. Roger has
developed Collaborative Online Working Spaces (COWS) which operate using
Moodle. These free open sourced spaces operate within the context of core
knowledge instruction within the NSW Board of Studies (BOS) teaching
syllabuses. Teachers use these Moodles to engage students as active
participants in their own learning; they build on a foundation of critical
skills and combining support systems such as student, teacher and parent
understanding of standards, assessment, curriculum, quality teaching and
professional learning. Through the COWS Moodles, students are enthusiastically
engaged in a variety of online forums, discussions, wikis, blogs, quizzes,
virtual learning environments, connected classrooms, nings among a variety of
other initiatives. Students use Adobe Creative Suite 4 software, Microsoft
Office software, GeoGebra, Google Earth,
Google Sketchup, glogsters, laptop wraps, iTunes, Edmodo, podcasts, vodcasts
and prezi to connect, collaborate and create. The Moodle COWs site serves as a
springboard for more COWs to develop as the early adopter schools grow and
expand to host their own Moodle sites.
2. Wordpress COWs – examples of blogs for parents,
professional learning for teachers, class blogs, service blogs. These highlight
how parents, teachers and students work together to ensure significance,
relevance, common understandings and quality learning environments that
encourage risk taking, having a go, creating new meanings, new directions, new
understandings. Connect, collaborate and create.
3. Moodle
Sandbox – a support site for teachers. Teachers can access and extend
learning. Examples of courses developed include; Blogging101, ICT to Engage the
Millenium Generation, Office Onenote, HCC IWB Day, Moodle Basics, Web2 Tools –
How To Course, Vodcasting, Podcasting and Moviemaking, Internet research in the
DER classroom (DER – Digital Education Revolution), HCC Laptop Wrap Day.
On the www.pryorcommitment.com site you will
see:
1. LIPs – Leading in Public Schools – a blog space
where Roger posts about current issues in education that will help teachers
develop leadership skills, improved understanding of the role of ICT in
teaching worldwide, nationally, within the state, within the region. He gives
examples of curriculum constructs and paradigm shifts that will help schools
and teachers successfully utilise technology in their work. These include
Planning School; Connect, Collaborate, Create (CCC) and Tight Loose Tight. Some
examples include:
2. Pebbles In The Pool – a blog space where Roger
shares personal experiences, journeys, thoughts and ideas as he has grown and
developed as an innovator and leader of technology.
3. Links to COWs, Parent Grapevine, Service Learning Space,
Hunter Region branch of the Australian College of Educators (ACE), Newcastle
New Institute, resources and music. This demonstrates Roger’s commitment to
modelling authentic, real world application of technology in learning.
Both these sites clearly establish thriving
implementation of technology infused education initiatives; how staff and
colleagues have been inspired to successfully use technology in their work: how
students are active participants in their own learning; an outstanding program cycle
of continuous growth and improvement; authentic, significant and relevant
real-world application of technology in learning and the exceptional way in
which Roger has championed effective ubiquitous use of computing. Roger’s model
of Planning School, his belief in Tight Loose Tight, his support of
glocalisation and his constant focus on Connect, Collaborate, Create which are
explained, made evident and utilised
extensively in both http://hccweb2.org and
http://www.pryorcommitment.com strongly
demonstrate and outline Roger’s vision for the transformation of education in
the 21st century.
Roger has modelled collaboration across traditional
local, state and regional boundaries throughout his career as an educator. His
websites are open and accessed by a large number of educators both nationally
and internationally as seen by the comments and by recorded access statistics
of his sites. He is an active
participant in social media and specifically is recognised as a mentor to a wide
range of educators across government, private and independent sectors through pryorcommitment@twitter.com
Examples of recent tweets include: through Twitter
that I came to know and value Roger Pryor. I am a Principal of a large government
high school in an outlying low socio-economic suburb of Sydney. My school is
half selective, catering for gifted and talented students, and half
comprehensive, catering for the local community. Roger has supported me in the
development of my school Moodle, in the establishment of my school leadership
blog (http://eduleader.org/learning4leaders),
has provided me with significant opportunities to engage with other educators
across the state, has mentored me in the development of my own leadership
skills and specifically in my own schools adoption of Planning School as a
framework for the education of my students within the 21st century. My school,
Macquarie Fields High School (http://www.mfhs.nsw.edu.au),
has been named by the Federal Government of Australia as a Centre for
Excellence in Teaching Quality and Student Outcomes. This has meant that my
school is extremely high profile and that Planning School, Tight Loose Tight,
and Connect, Collaborate, Create has become an excepted paradigm for the future
of schooling within my own school, my own district and my own region.
Through Roger, I have formed a partnership with Adobe
Australia and am currently working with Roger, the NSW Department of Education
and Training Digital Education Revolution Team and Adobe on a Proof of Concept
with respect to the use of forms to streamline administration in schools,
districts and regions. The same team is also currently organising a national
“teachmeet” which will take the form of an online conference through connected
rooms, sites and meeting rooms. This will be a first of its kind in NSW. Additionally, Roger Pryor has demonstrated a
proven ability as a communicator, with a range of published work and a long
list of positively received keynote and workshop presentations at regional and
state level within NSW. These relate to leadership in schools, technology
innovation and working collaboratively and in teams for school improvement. He
has presented at international conferences such as ITSE2009, ACEC2010 and will
present at CEGSA2010.
In particular, Roger has collaborated with personnel
at state and regional level to design responses to the growing need to support
schools in the implementation of the Connected Classrooms Project and the
impending Digital Education Revolution.
This has been coupled with membership of the NSWDET ICT Strategic Alliance and the regional
redevelopment of the manner in which ICT infrastructure services and support
are delivered. He has established
and maintained websites for a number of regional, state and national bodies. In
addition, he has established his own web site (http://www.pryorcommitment.com )
which he uses to share resources and information to support school leadership
ideas and a range of resources. He has
welcomed the opportunity to work with others within his district, his region
and across the state to enhance the “web presence” of NSWDET schools and has
demonstrated excellent outcomes in the area of online communication and use of
Web 2.0 technologies to assist information gathering and sharing. He has had a number of papers published in
national leadership journals and as part of the reading for international and
Australian online conferences. Also, he
has given a large number of presentations to well over 3,000 people across NSW
ranging from beginning teachers to SASS staff groups, aspiring leaders,
technology teams and Principals.
As the School Education Director with responsibility
for ICT within his region Roger has a shared responsibility with the Regional
IT Manager, and with project officers within the IT Directorate and project
teams to plan and respond appropriately to the needs of the roll out of
millions of dollars worth of video conferencing facilities, to facilitate and
ensure the Digital Education Revolution which means every student in NSW
schools has a netbook computer and to jointly plan the delivery of training and
other support services. He has
consistently demonstrated a commitment to the necessary shifts within pedagogy
which the digital world demands. This
has been clearly recognised within the national agenda and in the NSW
government commitment to the Connected Classrooms initiative. The capacity of these programs to provide
even more potential for students in any location to have access to ideas and
opportunities from across the world means as a leader in a key role within
education Roger consistently champions approaches which seek to engage students
to be good “digizens” and to reinforce the concept summed up by Yong Zhao, when
he refers to “glocalisation,” that curious balance between ‘thinking globally’
and ‘acting locally.’
I strongly believe that Roger Pryor would be an
outstanding and worthy recipient for the CRSTE Leadership and Vision Award. He
is an outstanding leader, advocates brilliantly for the effective infusion of
technology into instruction that reflects the skills, knowledge and experiences
that are essential for success in the 21st century global economy. He is a
thoughtful mentor and consistently “pays it forward” so that others can benefit
from his expertise. His interpersonal skills and belief systems complement and
support his exceptional work as a visionary leader in ICT education in
Australia. I recommend Roger Pryor
unconditionally in every respect of his leadership and work which is fully and
explicitly interconnected in the process of 21st century teaching and learning.
He thinks creatively, he works creatively, he implements innovations, he
reasons effectively, he makes considered and relevant judgements and decisions,
he solves problems in both conventional and innovative ways, he communicates
clearly, collaborates with others, critically accesses, uses and manages, he
analyses media thoughtfully, he creates media products, he applies technology
effectively and productively, he adapts well to change, he is flexible, he
manages his goals and his time productively, he works independently, he is a
lifelong learner, he interacts positively and meaningfully with others, he
works effectively in diverse teams, he manages projects, he produces results,
he guides and leads others and is responsible to others.
Phillippa Cleaves works as a School Education Officer
directly responsible to Roger Pryor for the implementatio of the Digital
Education Revolution in Hunter Central Coast School for NSWDET. Phillippa's
blog is organised as support for Roger and is representative of hsi leadership,
vision and beliefs. http://hccweb2.org/pip
Web Resources
Displaying Nominee's Work:
http://hccweb2.org
http://www.pryorcommitment.com
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