Ricoh is running a series of blogs on its new educational services site.
I was given the challenge of identifying – in 1400 words – where to now.
The thoughts can be read at – http://comms.ricoh.com.au/educate-blogs-Where-to-Now-Education.html
Mal Lee
Mal Lee and Roger Broadie
In observing the workings of the pathfinder schools that have normalised the use of the digital one is struck by the palpable excitement, the professionalism of the staff, their quest for continued enhancement, the embrace of change, the mess and seeming chaos, the social networking, the belief that anything is possible, the risk taking and teachers singly and in ad hoc combinations ‘flying’, seeking to take advantage of the ever emerging opportunities.
In many respects the culture is akin to that of start up companies.
The contrast with the traditional school culture with its constancy, continuity, conformity, set procedures, micro management, adverseness to risk and change and its body of disempowered, seemingly tired staff going through the motions is pronounced.
It is however a culture that has taken years, an astute leadership and a supportive digital ecosystem to create.
But it is one that every school should aspire to work within.
Contrary to the myth that teachers will not accept change the reality is that the above mentioned cultural shift has occurred in normal, everyday schools with a typical mix of staff. Yes in time the more capable professionals seek out the pathfinders and add to their attraction but early on the pathfinders had the usual staff ‘challenges’.
For schools, like businesses to grow in a rapidly evolving, often uncertain digital and networked world they need a supportive organisational culture that thrives in seeming chaos and with constant evolution.
Peters (1987) in Thriving on Chaos, and Deal and Kennedy (1982) in their work on apt organisational cultures recognised that imperative thirty plus years ago.
It has taken some time but finally the pathfinder schools globally have demonstrated the critical importance of having a culture that fosters and supports their digital evolution.
The challenge is very much primarily human and not technological.
It calls for an astute principal willing and able to create and grow that culture over time, able to roll with the inevitable frustrations.
It necessitates the principal trusting and empowering a usually disempowered staff, student body and parent group, and being willing to distribute the control of the teaching and learning.
The genuine empowerment of the teachers and the professional support staff is particularly important, working to ensure all are treated as professionals – and not factory line workers – who are educated in the macro workings of the school as well as their speciality area/s.
It requires an apt, mature, appropriately governed professionally maintained digital ecosystem that supports and fosters the desired teaching and learning culture and which can accommodate staff wishing to fly while still maintaining a high level of efficiency and reliability.
It most assuredly requires each school to take charge of its own evolution and for the educational bureaucrats to support each school’s decision making and cease using the technology to micro manage the school’s operations and frustrate the growth of the desired culture.
The creation of the desired culture will take years and constant nurturing but the going becomes that much easier when the school moves to a digital operational base and begins shaping the desired school ecosystem.
Mal Lee and Roger Broadie
The challenge all schools wanting to prepare the young for a digital and networked society have to successfully meet is the creation of a school wide culture of change.
For the vast majority of schools that entails a fundamental, 180-degree turnabout, and the creation of a culture antithetical to what has long been regarded as the desired norm.
That change in culture will take years of concerted astute effort and skilful school leadership.
It entails moving the school from a culture of constancy and continuity, that is highly risk adverse and anxious about change to one that embraces and thrives upon on-going, rapid and often uncertain change, evolution and transformation and which actively encourages and supports risk taking and innovation by all within the school’s community.
It places the learner rather than the teacher at the centre and moves the school away from teaching mass groups to a more individualised and differentiated approach.
It requires the school to move from its traditional highly hierarchical organisational structure where the executive unilaterally control operations and the vast majority of the staff, the students and the parents are disempowered and simply acquiesce, to a flatter organisational structure that trusts and empowers all members of the school community, that distributes the control of the teaching and learning and actively collaborates with all in school community in the 24/7/365 teaching and learning, and growth of the school.
Critically it entails the shift from an insular, loosely coupled organisation where each silo like unit is largely autonomous, strongly resistant to change, to a tightly integrated, ever evolving socially networked, digitally based ecosystem with the agility and desire to rapidly and continually transform its operations. Where the former takes literally years to respond to the changing circumstances the latter can adjust in months.
Bhaduri and Fischer (2015) posed in the Forbes business magazine the question, ‘Are You an Analogue or Digital Leader? (http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfischer/2015/03/19/are-you-an-analog-or-digital-leader/) While written with business in mind in two pages they succinctly describe the culture found in most schools and that required to succeed in a digital and networked world.
Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull rightly observes that while this is one of the most exciting times in human history it requires of the nation, of all organisations a mindset, a culture willing to embrace the on-going digital transformation, to take risks and to learn from failure.
This is the kind of culture found in the pathfinder schools globally (Lee and Broadie, 2016) and the digital masters in industry (Westerman, et.al, 2014).
It is an anathema to the majority of schools and educational bureaucracies, set on maintaining their unilateral control of the teaching and learning.
For schools, like business to thrive in a digital revolution they must adopt a culture and a mindset apposite for that scene.
It is not merely about acquiring the technology, but rather it entails the creation over the years of an ecology, and a school community wide culture that facilitates and supports on-going evolution and transformation.
Until schools create that culture their growth will be stymied.
Martin Levins and I have just released our 2016 edition of BYOT and the Digital Evolution of Schooling.
It is now available free as an e-book.
While building on our earlier 2012 publication for ACER Press on Bring Your Own Technology the new work addresses the rapid developments in the last four years and positions the move to BYOT within the wider digital evolution and transformation of schooling.
The authors’ have decided to make the work freely available to all interested globally wanting advice and direction on the key development.
It can be downloaded from the Professor Peter Twining’s EdFutures site in the UK at – http://edfutures.net/Lee_and_Levins_2016.
This is the first of the 2016 series of short blogs on the digital evolution of schooling. All posts in the series relate to the 10 Week Digital Leadership Programs.
Mal Lee and Roger Broadie
Schools in the developed world have to go digital if they are to remain viable (Lee and Broadie, 2015).
In the same way as the digital masters in industry are showing the way forward and are employing highly efficient and increasingly productive digitally based ecosystems to heighten their productivity and to win the custom so too are the pathfinder schools globally.
Indeed it is now apparent the traditional, much loved but highly inefficient, inflexible paper based school has as much chance of competing against a digital school as the local bookseller has against its online competition. Like the bookseller it might take a few years, but in time the viability of paper based schools will be increasingly tested.
In a world where the young and their parents – the clients of the school – have normalised the everyday, 24/7/365 use of the digital and have ever rising expectations of the technology it is already clear increasingly they will choose, when available those digital schools that meet or exceed their educational, cultural and digital expectations.
Schools can opt to continue operating within the paper based paradigm, unilaterally deciding what is educationally appropriate, focussing on paper based external exams, banning the use of the students’ digital technologies, daily lagging ever further behind both society’s rising digital expectations and the pathfinder schools astute all pervasive use of the digital but each day they do they take themselves further out of the game.
Where the traditional insular paper based mode of schooling has after a hundred plus years maximised its potential the digital, socially networked mode of schooling is just beginning to tap its immense potential and to markedly enhance its productivity.
The digital evolution of the pathfinder schools, and their adoption of increasingly integrated, mature, powerful and agile digitally based ecosystems has highlighted not only their immense potential and their ready facility to realise that potential but also the very considerable structural limitations and inefficiencies of the traditional mode of schooling. Where the former is structurally and culturally highly agile and equipped to accommodate rapid on-going change and evolution the latter is structurally inflexible, and change and risk adverse. Even well led elementary schools will take approximately five years of concerted effort to reach the Digital Normalisation stage.
Sit down and compare the educational, cultural, social, economic benefits, and the likely productivity of a paper based and digital school and it obvious why all schools will have to go digital to have a hope of remaining viable.
Ask yourself the simple question, to which would you send your children?
Mal Lee
All of the schools studied that have normalised the whole school use of the digital and which are developing increasingly higher order, digitally based school ecosystems have all had an astute principal to lead the way and the services of what is in essence a ‘chief digital officer’ (CDO).
The same is to be found in the transformation of the digital masters of the business world (Westerman et al, 2014).
In all, the organisation’s digital transformation has been skilfully shaped by a CEO working closely with a chief digital officer’ charged with converting the leader’s digital vision into a working reality.
Indeed a 2014 McKinsey Consulting study observed
Leadership is the most decisive factor for a digital program’s success or failure. Increasing C-level involvement is a positive sign, and the creation of a CDO role seems to be a leading indicator for increasing the speed of advancement (McKinsey, 2014).
Little is the wonder that businesses, and indeed major cities worldwide are clamouring to secure the services of CDO’s capable of supporting the CEO in orchestrating the desired on-going digital transformation.
Few associated with schools have yet to grasp the same imperative exists for all schools.
If schools are to undergo the desired digital evolution and shape an ever more productive digitally based school ecosystem they too will need that role to be played.
In the pathfinder schools the ‘CDO’ role has been played by all manner of positions, by deputy principals, e-Learning coordinators, Technology Coordinators, CIO’s and indeed in several instances by several staff working closely together. The actual title doesn’t matter.
What is critical is having a senior staff member who shares the principal’s digital vision and macro understanding of the workings of the school, with a strong awareness of the digital, able to work collaboratively with an empowered staff in providing the apposite tightly integrated digital platform.
It requires an appreciation of the school’s shaping educational vision, the kind of digitally based ecosystem and school culture that will best realise that vision and the facility to provide the total digitally empowered school community the apposite ever evolving seamlessly integrated digital ecosystem.
It most assuredly does not require an ‘ICT expert’ who unilaterally decides what technology all in the school will use.
Critically it needs a visionary educator able to collaborate with digitally empowered staff, students and parents, ensuring all are provided with the opportunity to fly with the digital, who can simultaneously govern the school’s use of the digital and ensure multiple systems and offerings are appropriately integrated and refreshed.
Behind the working website discussed in the previous article is an extensive, ever evolving tightly integrated digital ecosystem that provides the platform upon which the school operates and grows, and which needs to be thoughtfully designed, shaped, maintained and refined.
Without it the digital school cannot operate let alone grow.
The shaping of that increasingly sophisticated and powerful digital ecosystem entails a skilful balancing act, accommodating the seeming paradox of fostering a school wide culture of change, where teachers are empowered to take risks and where there will inevitably be uncertainty, mess and at times seeming chaos while simultaneously shaping an integrated, highly efficient and effective digital ecosystem able to continually deliver the desired schooling.
The Chief Digital Officer (CDO).
The concept of the CDO, even within the business world is a relatively recent one but is already viewed globally as being critical to the digital transformation of all manner of organisations (www.digitalevolutionofschooling.net) (Solis, et al, 2014) (McKinsey, 2014).
Westerman, McAfee and Bonnet in their seminal study of the corporate digital masters concluded
The CDOs job is to turn cacophony into a symphony. He or she creates a unifying digital vision, energises the company around digital possibilities, coordinates digital activities, and some times provides critical tools or resources (Westerman, et al, 2014, p144).
Chan Suh, a CDO writing in Wired observed
Almost by definition, the CDO must be a bit of a free thinker, willing to experiment, fail and move on. They embrace data-based experimentation, adapt quickly and make iterative decisions. …CDOs need to be able to move nimbly in all parts of the corporation, in terms of both departments and functions: Digital integration impacts employees, customers and the whole portfolio of products. That means they need to speak multiple business languages and simplify what can seem like insanely complicated technology. But above all, the job requires being persuasive, adaptable and visionary (http://www.wired.com/2014/01/2014-year-chief-digital-officer/).
The CDO is a very well recompensed, high-level executive position with ultimate responsibility for every facet of the organisation’s digital ecosystem.
While the demands within the school will not be as great as in a multinational the nature and standing of the role to be played remains basically the same.
Relationship with Principal, the CEO
In all the aforementioned literature and within the pathfinder schools studied one notes the vital close working relationship between the head of the organisation and the CDO. It stands to reason. The ‘chief digital officer’, whatever title they actually carry has the responsibility for implementing the CEO’s digital vision for the organisation.
Whether it is a school or business both people need to work closely as they shape the organisation’s on-going digital transformation and take the organisation into unchartered waters. A recent interview with a deputy head in a 2,500 student English sixth form college, who was very much that school’s ‘chief digital officer’, underscored the importance of working closely with the head in identifying the solutions that will bring about the desired digital and organisational evolution; in a situation where there were no other UK experiences to draw upon.
Governance of the school’s digital ecosystem
As school’s move to a digital operational base, normalise the whole school community use of the digital, develop mature, higher order, more integrated ecosystems and seemingly daily contemplate the use of new more sophisticated technology so it becomes increasingly important for each to ‘govern’, to shape in an apposite manner the growth of the school’s digital ecosystem.
The shaping in the apposite manner, the maintaining and strengthening of an ecology that fosters on-going school evolution and enhancement, that allows the school as Pascale and his colleagues call it to operate on the ‘edge of chaos’ (Pascale, et al, 2000) is evermore important.
This is very much an individual school responsibility, not that of external ICT experts who have no understanding of each school’s unique culture.
Each school needs to determine its own mode of digital governance.
The strong impression – and it is only that – is that many of the pathfinders, contending as they are with rapid and accelerating organisational transformation, making increasing use of the students’ technologies and a plethora of cloud based services are fast approaching the point productivity wise of having to corral some of the digital services employed in the school and to seriously question if a laissez faire model of technology use is apt. This is particularly apparent in larger secondary schools where on the one hand the school is seeking to integrate its workings while at the same time encouraging teachers to make best use of the emerging digital technology.
Do you need to rethink your digital governance?
What role of the technology committee?
Traditionally in schools, business and the wider public sector the technology or ICT committee was charged with that ‘governance’, but all too often operated as a stand alone group implementing its own agenda.
What is now clear (Westerman, et al, 2014) if you want digital transformation you don’t give the job to a committee. All thereon have full time jobs.
Committees can make decisions, but they cannot drive change. Leaders do that (Westerman, et al, 2014, p143).
Seriously question the need for a technology committee.
Interestingly none were used in any of the successful pathfinder schools.
In all the digital transformation was orchestrated by the principal and the ‘CDO’ and the work was undertaken by the ‘CDO’ and all manner of staff and increasingly others within the school’s community.
Finding a school ‘CDO’.
The finding of a staff member or even several staff to play the role of the school CDO is likely to be difficult. The kind of skill set described above is rare, even in the corporate world. One is looking in schools at experienced educators with a macro vision for schooling, with the desire to lead, to take risks and to embrace on-going organisational evolution, with very strong digital acumen and with the people skills needed to take empowered professionals along on the evolutionary journey.
The pathfinder schools have in some respects been fortunate to have such personnel, but as one digs one finds most of these schools have over time ‘grown’ or recruited these people, consciously continually enhancing their skill set.
In many respects it should not come as a surprise that many of the school ‘CDOs’ are deputy or assistant principals, demonstrating many of the attributes identified in ‘Leading a Digital School’ (Lee, 2014) needed to be the principal of a digital school.
None that I’m aware of have been trained for the role by either their education authority or a tertiary education, but that said there are pathfinder education authorities globally which are now assisting the development of such personnel.
In 2015 you will likely have to grow your own ‘CDO’, or recruit and then grow the potential ‘CDO’. As indicated in schools small and large it is a role that can be performed by a like-minded, driven pair of staff able to work closely. Indeed such a pair could possibly include a non educator provided she/he had strong digital expertise, and was able to address the organisation’s shaping vision.
Conclusion
One could strongly argue that the current situation in the pathfinder schools where the ‘CDO’ role is normalised and untitled is the desired one.
The key is that the role is performed successfully and naturally shapes the desired evolution and strengthening of the school’s digital ecosystem.
In so saying it might well be opportune in certain school situations, like in business to use the appointment of a CDO to proclaim the school’s intention to use the digital to transform its operations.
That is a call each school needs to make.
What however is that much clearer is that schools in moving to a digital operational base and becoming increasingly reliant on a more sophisticated, powerful, integrated and productive digital ecosystem will need apt processes to govern its operation and growth, processes that are appreciably more sophisticated and effective way than the traditional ‘ICT’ committee.
While the digital transformation business literature (www.digitalevolutionofschooling.net) and the articles on CDOs will assist, schools do have a very different shaping purpose to corporations and need their own solution.
As schools commence their digital evolution journey they should be addressing how the ‘CDO’ role will be performed and identifying an apt mode of governing the growth of an apposite school digital ecosystem.
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