Administrators play a pivotal role in determining how well technology is used in our schools. ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) has a list of NETS (National Educational Technology Standards) for administrators. NETS have served as a roadmap for improved teaching and learning by educators throughout the United States. (http://www.iste.org).   The question is where these standards fit in the setting of a LC-MS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) school that has an enrollment around 200 students. It is critical for any school of any size to follow these standards as closely as possible. The days of microfilm, cassette tapes, and reel to reel were abandoned a while ago. Most small Lutheran schools are still trapped in the “VCR, CDs, overhead projector, and Windows 95” era. The internet has changed the way schools can reach and teach students. The administrator needs to be on the cuff of it all before they are out of date, just like Web 1.0 technology.

“Educational leaders inspire a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology and foster an environment and culture conducive to the realization of that vision,” (http://www.iste.org). Administrators are the eyes of their schools. They need to always be looking ahead. The administrator needs to be a cheerleader when they have decided to take their level of commitment to technology to the next level. In a small school setting this is a double edge sword. The administrator will either need to win a lot of staff over or a few. The issue for a school of this size is always how much will technology improvement cost. The administrator will need to paint the picture for everyone to see, including the staff and church that support the school. Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Presentation can help administrators paint the perfect picture to win over the board of education. Keeping a podcast blog will help supporters stay in touch with your vision.

“Educational leaders ensure that curricular design, instructional strategies, and learning environments integrate appropriate technologies to maximize learning and teaching.”(http://www.iste.org). Any time you get a new curriculum the teacher guide will come with some sort of CD for supplement. Administrators need to make sure teachers utilize the
information on these disks to help engage every student. The world loves free stuff and the world and teachers can be happy with some good free programs and services. There are so many
companies like Google (http://www.google.com), Kerpoof (http://www.kerpoof.com), Kid Thing
(http://www.kidthing.com), and Voice Thread (http://www.voicethread.com) that want to help
students. They will offer their services for free. Google applications are a simple version of
Microsoft Office, where students can cooperatively work together at school and in their own
homes. Companies like Accelerated Reader (paid service) have been beneficial for improving reading skills while having fun. The options are endless as to what you can do to supplement your current curriculum. Dr. Bull of Concordia University Wisconsin touched on what a Church can do to help in the age of technology in a recent conference session entitled “Ministry in a Virtual World”. Using his ten steps (see slides) an administrator can change it to fit their Lutheran school. None of the starting
points are impossible and are easy to implement. Creating a blog for the main happenings of the school could improve communication greatly with parents, as one Lutheran school is doing to great success (http://glseagles.wordpress.com/). Teachers can do digital story telling (Voice Thread) with their students to give students a new view and get the student lost into the work. Lutheran High School of Orange County (Orange, California) has been a forerunner in the game of online learning for high schools. You can now live in Maine and be an Orange Lutheran High School student without leaving your home. Services from
Collaborative Learning Inc. called Curriculum Mapper will give you a visual of what is actually going on in the classroom month by month.

“Educational leaders apply technology to enhance their professional practice and to increase their own productivity and that of others,” (http://www.iste.org). Any administrator can find a webinar or some sort of free online class about anything. Technology in Lutheran Schools (http://www.techls.ning.com) and following some good blogs like Dave Black, “The Church Door” (http://www.thechurchdoor.com/), will keep you updated with the latest technology with a Lutheran point of view. Subscribing to listservs from the synod will fill your email inbox with important information. Social network websites are the crave for any generation. Ning (http://www.ning.com) provides a way to create a free social network. Every school could have their unique social network site. Teachers could belong to one to help each other outside the school setting or collaborate on projects. Skype (http://www.skype.com) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com) are both great tools that have replaced the once popular instant messaging services. With Twitter you could be networked with people around the world and ask simple questions and have an answer within minutes from varying sources and point of views. One classroom of fourth graders found out how special using Skype can be. It changed the lives of every fourth grader and their teacher forever (http://tinyurl.com/22q6cr ). With Skype they were able to connect with a student of their class they never saw. One of the students was working independently at home. The teacher would send work home and receive work back at school. Skype became the solution so the student was able to connect via a web cam and mic to the rest of their class. The students were able to learn from this student as to what it takes when
someone is going through leukemia. The best part of Skype and Twitter is that it is free. This is something a small Lutheran school always could use.

“Educational leaders ensure the integration of technology to support productive systems for learning and administration,” (http://www.iste.org). The administrator will need to develop and implement policies and guidelines on the use of technology. To decide which policies they
want to enforce, using a check list for assessing decision-making effectiveness could be beneficial (Gorton, 53-55). Creating a policy from scratch can be very difficult, especially for a Lutheran administrator that is lacking in technology or expertise in the area of the policy. LSPortal (http://www.lsportal.net) is a safe haven for any teacher or administrator. Besides being able to stay up-to-date with what is going on in your own district and synod, the possibilities of networking is endless. The portal has a vast range of resources. Administrators can partake in forums and discuss issues or use documents that are already created. These just need to be fine tune for the individual school. The documents are just waiting to be downloaded for any administrator to use.

“Educational leaders use technology to plan and implement comprehensive systems of effective assessment and evaluation,” (http://www.iste.org). Some states give free help to school in order to assess your staff where they stand on technology usage. EdTechProfile (http://www.edtechprofile.com, for California) provides tools that guide administrators about how to integrate technology into classroom instruction and how to create and evaluate effective teacher technology training programs. Over time you can compare data (see chart) on yourself and staff and you can see how staff members are growing and improving. Sun Associates (http://www.sun-associates.com/) specializes in designing plans and procedures to evaluate and assess the impact of educational technology on teaching and learning. Their evaluation work is designed to take schools and districts beyond their current strategic technology plans into an area where they can begin to assess their progress in meeting the vision and goals of these plans. In the area of program evaluation for funded projects (i.e., “grants”), Sun Associates work with projects to focus their goals, define evaluation questions, collect data, and to create formative/comprehensive evaluation reports.

“Educational leaders understand the social, legal, and ethical issues related to technology and model responsible decision making related to these issues,” (http://www.iste.org). The easiest way to make sure every student is having a fair share of technology learning is to have enough computers for each student in a computer lab setting and a few computers in the classroom. Lutheran administrators can use their districts to help. The Pacific Southwest District has a group, S.T.A.T, to help the district Lutheran schools in the terms of technology and even supplying computers to schools. S.T.A.T is doing this specifically for Pacific Southwest Learning Center in Hollywood, California. Alan Lutz (Chairman of S.T.A.T, St. Paul Lutheran School; Orange, CA) took a dozen donated computers to the school and hooked them up for the children to use. For any government issued decision a Lutheran administrator will have to implement the No Child Left Behind website (http://www.nclb.gov/) which provides a handful of helpful resources.

In conclusion, it is difficult for small Lutheran schools to take all the advantages that educational technologies companies can offer due to the cost of technology. There are plenty of resources that an administrator can find on the World Wide Web. If the administrator is good, they will be able to find very practical, free resources. Companies like ISTE help administrators by not having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to what they should be doing. The individual districts have teams, like S.T.A.T (Pacific South West District) to aid the schools in their district. The synod has individuals like Dr. Perry Bresemann, Technology Director for Lutheran Schools and popular bloggers and Lutheran educators, Dave Black and Rob Jacklin. Administrators
could use number of management programs from Hunters System (http://www.huntersystems.com/) to help the day to day operations of running a school. Using a wiki, an online encyclopedia created by individuals, students can learn from peers who share their success strategies. For example, as high school English students encounter problems in
writing a contrast essay, they can post a quick message on a wiki such as PBwiki (Now PBworks) or wikispaces. As other students encounter the same learning roadblock, they can go to the wiki to see their classmates’ suggestions. They then receive feedback from their peers who typically word the solutions in very student-friendly language. Keeping a Blog, parents can follow what is happening at school without even leaving their office. The future holds no ends. Skype is being used to bring in students from home. Moodles are being used to create an entire school based solely on the internet. Students will sit at home and log on and do their work and take their tests. Colleges and Universities are adding new programs, like Concordia University of Wisconsin which has a new M.S. in Education – Educational Technology, to help educators and administrators learn and implement technology in the schools. Small Lutheran schools do not have to play catch up in technology anymore. They can now compete with any school, private or public. It will not be long before large schools begin looking at what small schools are doing to engage every student with technology. All it takes is an administrator with a vision and ability to share that vision.

References
Bull, Dr. Bernard. Ministry in a Virtual World. LEA Conference, 2008.
Gorton, R, Alston, J, & Snowden, P (2007). School leadership and administration: important concepts, case
studies, and simulations. New York: McGraw-Hill.
http://glseagles.wordpress.com
http://huntersystems.com
http://lsportal.net
http://ning.com
http://skype.com
http://techls.ning.com
http://thechurchdoor.com
http://tinyurl.com/22q6cr
http://twitter.com
http://www.edtechprofile.com
http://www.google.com
http://www.iste.org
http://www.kerpoof.com
http://www.kidthing.com
http://www.nclb.gov
http://www.sun-associates.com
http://www.voicethread.com