LIT2T Leadership Guide

33 TO: TABLE OF CONTENTS 6. Empowered Leadership Administrators may appoint and empower a leader of educational technology at the instructor level. Empowered leaders may be supported by joining an online community of practice or be funded to attend traditional conferences. These instructors can be change agents and make a positive difference in how educational technologies are used in program delivery. 7. Appropriate Funding Obtaining ongoing and adequate funding to support educational technology infrastructure, support and resources is critical. 8. Assessing of the State Of Educational Technology in Your Centre Technology is changing rapidly. It is essential for all stakeholders to appraise the combination of training, technology, support and their relation to learning outcomes at the centre. A summary sheet of these essential conditions can be found in Appendix A4. 6.2 How Learnit2teach Assists With The Essential Conditions The following list describes how the LearnIT2teach Project provides timely support for the essential conditions described in the list above: 1. Shared Vision Communication is a basic requirement for innovation with learning technology. Involving all of the centre’s stakeholders in creating a vision statement for educational technology may seem like a lot of work. But it is important, as the vision statement is a foundation that can be used to apply for funding, guide professional development, and ensure that all of the stakeholders reflect on educational technology in all activities at the centre. The vision statement should be based on the centre’s own mission statement. 2. Equitable Access The courseware provides a web based, language training service that is available anywhere and anytime to language training professionals and learners. Since there are no fees, The LearnIT2each Project offers equitable access within and beyond the school walls. 3. Ongoing Professional Development and Training LearnIT2teach provides important tools and pre-conditions to support blended learning in language training centres, including four stages of instructor training bolstered by mentorships, face-to-face sessions, Live Help, online animations, help files and just-in- time support. In addition, administrator training is available. As detailed in Section 6, our continuous professional development and training provides ESL instructors with resources to assure success in their classrooms. 4. Technical Support Live Help through access to the chat on the LearnIT2teach provides just in time technical assistance on issues related to the Edulinc courseware. Additionally, Section 10 of this manual details a selection of technical assistance strategies, which are available on the learnIT2teach portal (or Tutela.ca or Settlementatwork.Org) or can be found there as links to other sites. There are checklists that centres can use to provide technical support for the management of a TELL room, individual workstations or learner devices. As well, there are dozens of just-in-time learning demonstrations, digital documents and learner readiness resources that can be used for technical maintenance purposes.