Along came CoSN: Standards for IT Leadership in Schools

The Framework is the body of knowledge upon which CoSN’s CETL® exam is based on and is the guide to everything a successful CTO needs to know and do. All of CoSN's professional resources are based on the Framework. Image taken from CoSN.org

I've been involved in Education Technology going back to 1996/97 when I was still teaching High School Special Education students.  Schools were starting to search for leadership who could help with strategy and execution on that strategy for technologies and information systems in schools.  Common mistakes I saw schools make were typically around the types of people that schools sought out for this guidance, to no fault of those individuals.  Those two types I'll call "Teacher Technology Champions" and "Pure Technologists".  The Teacher Technology Champion (the category I probably fit in at that time) was someone who understood enough about technology at the time to see the emerging power that technology could have in the classroom, specifically with student engagement.  The Pure Technologist were those individuals that were Network and Voice Engineers, or professor types who had a passion for the bits and bytes that us "less educated" got excited about.  So as schools chose their "Teacher Technology Champion" or their "Pure Technologist" to lead the vision, strategy, and planning in the districts they were way strong in one area, and way weak in another.  They might have the Taj Mahal of networks and end-user technologies but no idea how to translate that to teaching and learning....or they had a brilliant teaching and learning plan for technology integration but an unreliable, poorly engineered system to accommodate the end-users.  Then along came CoSN!

CoSN (www.cosn.org) has been around for 25 years providing leadership to schools as it relates to technology and information systems.  In recent years CoSN has hit the nail on the head by developing a set of standards and framework for those individuals leading technology and information systems initiatives in their respective schools.  Their "Framework of Essential Skills of the K12 CTO" has laid out, in a very easy to understand fashion, the skills required to navigate the unique set of challenges schools face as their technological journey continues.

At Epiphany Management Group where I currently serve as the President & Chief Operating Officer we work in dozens of schools across the state of Ohio, and I've challenged my leadership team working in the schools to earn their CETL certification based off CoSN's Framework.
If you serve in a Chief Information or Chief Technology Officer role in your organization I encourage you to engage in the CoSN CETL certification process, it will be a tremendous benefit for both you individually and the school you serve.

Kudos CoSN, you got this one right!

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