Assignment 2: Change

Immediately I can take control of our orchestra’s Facebook page and Twitter account and begin to prepare it for the school year. I plan to shift the use of the page as a student-only center to a community center for orchestra. This is going to involve changing the function of the page from primarily student-focused announcements to posts that will be focused on branding our orchestra within our community. This will help me in achieving Standard 4 of NETS-A in that it will be establishing infrastructure for management, operations, teaching, and learning all in one action. It will also help me to lead purposeful change to maximize achievement, particularly in utilizing an already wide-open form of communication. In terms of the Pillars of Digital Leadership, as said before, this will help me open up lines of communication, better public relations, and enhance our branding.

Some of the cautions I need to be careful about here are interactions with students and parents over social media. Making this shift will provide students and parents easier access to my personal Facebook account, and ensuring that the proper channels of communication are used for school related questions and concerns will be critical. I will also need to follow the 5^th secret to change in implementing this shift with the upmost transparency so that everyone is aware of the reason for change. Along with student and parent issues that could arise, I will need to be mindful about district policies regarding teacher’s use of social media regarding their classrooms.

Other changes that I can make immediately are around my own personal use of social media and networking sites like Linkedin. Currently, Facebook is the most common form of social media I use, and I post maybe 3-4 times a year. Becoming more active on these sites will help me to establish strategic partnerships that could support improvement. In regards to the 7 pillars this could open up opportunities not only for myself but for students.

The other piece that I would like to make an immediate change to is my lesson planning. I have been known to say, “It’s tough to get better at the violin with an iPad in your hands.” However, I think I can better tailor some of my lessons to the ways in which my students are learning. I would like to start providing outcomes for my students that they would then have to use their resources to achieve. Specifically, I’m thinking of a monthly project where students are required to do a score study and identify the problem areas within a piece of music. Once the problem areas are identified they would then be required to come up with strategies for making those areas sound beautiful. This would hit the pillars in that I’m adapting instruction to enhance student engagement and adjust learning so that it is meaningful with concrete results that students will be able to hear. As with any group work the challenges will be ensuring that students are engaged with the task at hand. I will also have to ensure that students have the resources needed available to them when we are pursuing this assignment.