This document discusses the leadership needed to transform school culture through technology. It argues that schools must develop a culture of transformation by unlearning their current views of education, learning, curriculum and assessment. Effective leadership is needed to manage this change and lead schools to a radically new culture focused on student-centered learning. This includes transforming the faculty role, integrating virtual and formal learning environments, and strengthening relationships with external stakeholders. Only through such innovative changes can schools keep up with the rapidly changing world and empower students with digital tools.

1. Leadership that Leads to a
Culture of Transformation
Eduardo Chaves
MindWare – EduTec.Net
São Paulo, Brazil

2. Lessons learned here
• Belief
• Vision
• Policy

3. Belief

4. “Human beings are not the fastest animals. We're
not the strongest. We're not even the sharpest in
sight or smell.
It's amazing how we survived against the many
fierce creatures of nature.
We survived and prospered because of our minds.
We evolved to fill the cognitive niche. We learned
how to use . . . tools and technologies [that] have
helped us to shape the environment around us. … “

5. “Digital tools magnify the abilities that make us
unique in the world: the ability to think, the ability
to articulate our thoughts, the ability to work
together to act on those thoughts.
I strongly believe that if schools* empower their
students** and give them potent tools to do this
with, they will always be amazed at how much
creativity and initiative will blossom forth".
Bill Gates, in Business @ the Speed of Thought
[* companies, ** employees – in the original]

6. Vision

7. Let us place these powerful digital tools in the
hands of all children so that they can learn
anytime, anywhere

8. Qualification

9. The issue is universal access to quality tools.
In some parts of the world it will be three or four
tools per child.
In others it will be three or four children per tool
But this is the way it is, and it is fair, as long as
everyone has access.

10. Leadership

11. To make this vision a reality we need competent,
inspired, committed, untiring leadership at every
level
Within education, classroom, school, school system
Outside education: political, business, midia, etc.
At all levels: local, regional, national, global

12. Clarity

13. Reformation or Transformation?
• Transformation: radical, innovative change
• Radical, innovative change (transformation) only
comes about when we are convinced that the old
model / paradigm no longer works and that it is
not viable to reform it, to give it a fix
• Nothing short of a revolution will do

14. “The only way to change the school* is to imagine
it totally different from what it is today.
Apply too much of the wisdom and knowledge that
got us here, and you end up right where you
started.
Take an entirely fresh look from a radically new
perspective, and get a new result”
J Allard, Microsoft, Business Week, 4-Dec-06, p.64
[* world, in the original]

15. Where will it likely come from first?
• Difficult to tell...
• ... But easy to tell where it will not come from:
Finland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South
Korea
• These countries have probably led the old model
to its limit

16. As the quality of a given school or school system
goes up …
… the degree of radical innovation that becomes
acceptable in it goes down!
As the quality of a given school or school system
goes down …
… the degree of radical innovation that becomes
acceptable in it goes up!
Nicholas Negroponte, 2004

17. Risk
• Certainly there is a risk in innovating ...
• But there is more than risk in being conservative
in a world in radical transformation: there is the
certainty of obsolescence (“custodial place”)

18. An unlearning organization
• Before the school can be transformed, it has to
develop a culture of transformation
• To do this it needs to unlearn its present culture:
• Its view of education
• Its view of learning
• Its view of curriculum, methodology and assessment
• Unlearning is often a subversive activity

19. Leadership
• Effective leadership has to manage change and
lead the school to a radical new culture
• A new culture must include, besides curriculum
methodology and assessment:
• A consistent focus on protagonist student learning
• A new faculty: learning facilitators / mentors /
advisers / counselors / tutors, etc.
• A new learning environment that integrates face-to-
face and virtual, formal and non-formal
• A new relationship with external stakeholders

20. Thank you !
Eduardo Chaves
eduardo@chaves.com.br
http://chaves.com.br
http://ec.spaces.live.com