Mr. Gary Spence, Wolf Creek Assistant Superindendent

Today Gary Spence came in to speak to our class about his perspective of information technology and its implementation within the wolf creek school division. The reoccurring theme throughout his presentation was consistency. At the highest level of organization is the idea of a shared vision with students, staff and parents. This is continued throughout the organization. For example, their websites, designed with Rapid Web Designer, allows a consistent website at all levels. They also use what they call EXfiles, a repository for content that is developed by teachers that can be shared throughout the district allowing for collaboration and consistency across the district. With their 1:1 project, they use software to make the laptops as consistent as possible. When it comes to hardware, they also have consistent hardware that keeps maintenance cost down and allow similar it experiences at their different school.
They also make efficient use of focus groups to make informed decisions. This helps everybody to have input and get on the same page, which again lends itself to the consistency of the district. These groups are made for all of their big projects. The big advantage is that they can get a big picture idea of what the project should be. This takes more time upfront, but helps them to do things right, the first time. Planning is another concept that has come up from a lot of the presentations. David is a strong advocate that we need to plan at least 5 years in advance. This is very important to help maintain a stable financial plan.

David views technology in education as basic literacy in education. He believes that we should learn using technology, not necessarily learn how to use technology. He also thinks that the most foundational part of implementing technology is to first make it reliable, then train how to use, then integrate the technology and evaluate it. David's "fear" in IT in education is that we as educators will be irrelevant to the students with regards to education and technology. Students are the ultimate focus of what David does in his role.

David explicitly referred to the necessity of a leader being committed to kids, staff, excellence, integrity, dignity and respect. A leader, according to David must also be humble and must be a visionary. They must also have some (a lot) of technological and pedagogical knowledge to be able to constantly evaluate technologies in light of student learning.

As far as leadership qualities goes, David has a great ability to evaluate material, technology and communications that come his way. This is reflected in all of the policy that David is involved with. His team is in a constant process of assessing, then evaluating everything they do. This allows him to identify redundancies (making the division more efficient). This also allows him to evaluate where technology fits within the division's vision. David's team constantly is reviewing policy and decisions made on these policies to see that they are in accord with the rest of the division.