Clearly your passion and enthusiasm are inspiring and contagious to those you work with, which. I believe, is the first step in achieving Alan’s vision. You are creating an environment where participation, conversation and collaboration is to be expected and if you have your administrators on board after forwarding them just one post, you are a lucky IT director!

And, off the topic of this post, thanks for being such an enthusiastic commenter for the Comment Challenge!

Do all administrators need to blog? In my opinion probably NOT. Do all administrators who are asking their teachers to step into the 21st century and connect, collaborate, and communicate with anyone and anytime around the world and in the process involve and prepare their students to do the same thing? YES!

How can an administrator understand what blogging can do for your own professional development, networking communication, unless they go through the process themselves? Blogging is exposing yourself on a daily bases. What are you doing? What are you not doing? How are you doing it? What are you thinking? Explain your decisions, etc. The idea of transparency can only be asked, if administration is ready for it for themselves.
Greetings from Florida/USA
Silvia

I feel I know you so well through Twitter and email exchanges, but this is my first time at your blog.

I agree that the more people in a school community blog the better it will be fore the community, because after all a successful blog is a window into the mind and sometimes heart of the writer. The more we understand about how teachers, parents, students, and most importantly administrators think, the more honest of a community we can build.

I have known so many administrators who waste time with newsletters and faculty emails, when they can so much more with a well organized blog.

I liked what Chad said about teachers asking admin about their online presence. I think this is all still pretty new, except for the committed, but in time even more people will enter the world of social networks and blogging is the foundation of it all…or so I think.

If I had the choice between two schools, I would most likely pick the school with the blogging admin, because that shows a level of interest and dedication to the future, that I think more schools need.

YIS seems to be ahead of the game!

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2008/03/apples_design_p.html

“Pony Meeting
This refers to a story Lopp told earlier in the session, in which he described the process of a senior manager outlining what they wanted from any new application: “I want WYSIWYG… I want it to support major browsers… I want it to reflect the spirit of the company.” Or, as Lopp put it: “I want a pony!” He added: “Who doesn’t? A pony is gorgeous!” The problem, he said, is that these people are describing what they think they want. And even if they’re misguided, they, as the ones signing the checks, really cannot be ignored.”

No doubt, I’m an idealist, I want equality and information transparency. I reflect, “Are these my Pony projects?”

I would be interested to know exactly what is Alan’s “bold blogging goals”? Is it for everyone to have a blog? I’ve pondered this myself, as an IT Director do I need a blog? On deciding whether to blog , it helped me to first think who is my audience? The world, my friends and family, colleagues, other tech directors? (apologies for the heap of rhetorical questions going here) And it would seem that if you blog to a target audience, (for a school administrator I’d think that could be students, teachers, parents, other administrators) then there is plenty of justification for blogging.

I’d think as administrators recruit for jobs, they will be increasingly asked about their online presence. Show us what you believe.

Chad