The Standards‐based Digital School Leader Portfolio: Using TaskStream, LiveText, and PowerPoint

Citation

Sarver, M. (2011), "The Standards‐based Digital School Leader Portfolio: Using TaskStream, LiveText, and PowerPoint", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 49 No. 3, pp. 337-339. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231111129109

Living, learning, and working in the twenty‐first century are characterized by technological advancements. Technology is increasingly being used in elementary and secondary schools and in leadership preparation programs in colleges and universities. Students are leaving these institutions with a familiarity of technological ways of communicating, learning, and validating ideas. This comfortable utilization of computers and high‐tech gadgetry will increase teachers' expectations that school leaders use up‐to‐date tools to enhance workplace communications, deliver professional development, and share resources. School leaders desiring to stay abreast of issue and trends in the educational realm would be wise to embrace the possibilities that technological advancement brings. In fact, willingness to learn and grow along with societal changes and expectations can be a positive aspect of effective leadership, as it is a great way to model for followers how one handles stress and change with optimism.

Looking for work and creating a way to showcase one's professional experiences and abilities has consequently been transformed by technological innovations and expectations. The Standards‐based Digital School Leader Portfolio: Using TaskStream, LiveText, and PowerPoint is a “how to” manual of sorts for educational leaders wishing to or being required to display their professional capacities in a digital manner. The purpose of the book is to guide readers in the electronic collection, organization, and critique of experiences and performances of educational leaders. The resulting end products are portable, presentable, and easily updatable professional portfolios. The authors define and delineate types of portfolios and their usefulness to school administrators and learning communities:

The digital portfolio is used by school leaders, school leadership faculty members, and school leader candidates […] to document the knowledge, performance, and dispositions required by local, state, and national professional standards […] for evaluative, developmental, and career purposes (Hauser and Koutouzos, 2010, p. 26).

They further explain that professional portfolios created and maintained digitally have the potential to provide a more complete and authentic basis for assessing the experiences of school leaders and leadership candidates. Rather than just a filing system for evaluative checklists, digital portfolios can contain audio and video submissions, reflective entries, and artifacts that showcase a person's involvement in various job‐related activities. They can also aptly showcase one's skill and comfort with technology and more easily provide opportunities for feedback and evaluation.

The authors contend that the use of digital portfolios can positively affect pedagogy in numerous ways, including spurring faculty to be more creative and flexible with instruction, encouraging critique, increasing school‐wide communications, presenting holistic school processes, facilitating new discoveries, and aiding in technological learning. Portfolios can be designed with specific purposes in mind such as documenting self‐directed learning, aiding mentorship or job coaching, documenting accountability standards, and evaluating or documenting professional or academic growth. They can be organized in linear ways, in which submissions are viewed in a set order, or in less structured ways in which viewers can select and open items based on certain criteria of interest.

The authors have designed these portfolios to be standards based by highlighting (and providing templates for) the use of the six Interstate School Leader Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards established by the National Policy Board for Educational Administration (2002) and the five standards of the International Society for Technology in Education (2009).

The ISLLC standards, published in 1996 and revised in 2008 are:

1. 1.

   Facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision for learning that is shared and supported by all stakeholders.

2. 2.

   Advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth.

3. 3.

   Ensuring management of the organization, operation and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment.

4. 4.

   Collaborating with the faculty and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources.

5. 5.

   Acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner.

6. 6.

   Understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.

The National Technology Standards for Educational Administrators developed by ISTE establish that educational administrators will:

1. 1.

   Inspire and lead development and implementation of a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology to promote excellence and support transformation throughout the organization.

2. 2.

   Create, promote, and sustain a dynamic digital‐age learning culture that provides a rigorous, relevant, and engaging education for all students.

3. 3.

   Promote an environment of professional learning and innovation that empowers educators to enhance student learning through the infusion of contemporary technologies and digital resources.

4. 4.

   Provide digital‐age leadership and management to continuously improve the organization through the effective use of information and technology resources.

5. 5.

   Model and facilitate understanding of social, ethical, and legal issue and responsibilities related to an evolving digital culture.

Although portfolios can be established and organized around any number of ideals or standards, these common and professionally accepted standards may help portfolio builders to frame their projects and include thoughtful submissions.

The authors have detailed three different programs portfolio builders might use to aid in the creation of their digital collections. TaskStream and LiveText, which are web‐based programs requiring subscriptions, help educational leaders to create and organize appealing and easily navigable portfolios. The book contains concise directions about the use of each program complete with screenshots and instructional steps to follow. Subscribers will gain access to sample artifacts and templates for addressing various professional standards. The portfolio is stored on web‐based servers and owners can give access control to an unlimited number of viewers or potential employers or evaluators. For example, PowerPoint is a Microsoft Office software program that is commonly used in business and educational fields. The portfolio can be created within this widely available program and then easily shared via e‐mail attachments or with disks or flashdrives sent to or carried to viewers. The authors have included in the book, a web address with samples and templates that may be downloaded and used by portfolio builders.

Hauser and Koutouzos have also provided readers with ideas for evaluating portfolio submissions and technology needs of school leaders. Templates for these evaluations are also available to readers at the web site provided in the book. It is a timely and easy to follow resource for cutting‐edge school personnel. It is written with an informative introduction and rationale for digital portfolios and is useful as an instruction manual of sorts. It is helpful, although somewhat repetitive, that the authors have included three programs for portfolio builders to choose from in their endeavors. The information might also be useful if creators were to try to develop portfolios with other software with which they may be comfortable. School leaders or leadership candidates wishing to present themselves and their accomplishments would do well to use this book as a helpful guide.