What Should Today's School Administrators Know about Computers?.

Abstract

What Should Today's School Administrators Know About Computers? Computers have not only become commonplace in the classroom, but are now widely used for administrative functions in most school and college systems. While a great deal of attention has been focused on computer literacy for teachers, relatively little has been focused on literacy for administrators. As a consequence, administrators often lack any suitable preparation to effectively manage the computing activities in their schools or colleges. This lack of preparation has some serious ramifications. In schools or colleges where administrators have a limited grasp of how to use computers, many functions that could be made more efficient through computerization are still done manually. This includes routine activities such as scheduling, registration, attendance tracking, grade reporting, form letters, payrolls, budgeting and accounting. Lack of sophistication about computers often leads to poor decisions about hardware/software selection or to implementation that limits their usefulness. To the extent that administrators have an educational leadership role in a school, their use and support of computers should provide a model for classroom use. Over the past ten years, I have taught a number of undergraduate and graduate courses on administrative computing. Based upon this experience as well as involvement in various educational computing projects, I have come to the conclusion that computer literacy should be a required competency for all school administrators. In particular, the core curriculum of any college program in educational administration should include an administrative computing course. This article outlines the syllabus for such a course and discusses the rationale for the content. Defining Competencies There are five basic competencies for a computer-literacy school administrator. They include the ability to: 1. describe the possible administrative uses of computers; 2. determine what applications are appropriate for a given school situation; 3. select the best software and hardware for a given administrative application; 4. develop successful implementation plans for computer applications; and 5. use computers as a personal productivity tool. Let's look at these competencies in more detail. Possible Administrative Uses. The first step to computer literacy for school administratos is to know the possible administrative applications of computers. Major applications include: student registration, class scheduling, test scoring, grade reporting, attendance tracking and payroll processing. Word processing, spreadsheet and database programs have many administrative applications, such as parent/teacher letters, proposal writing, budgets and recordkeeping. In addition, computers can be used for library, guidance and athletic functions. Determine Appropriate Applications. Even though there may be many benefits associated with a computer application in general, for a given school at a particular time the application may or may not be a good idea. For each potential application, it is necessary to make a cost/benefits assessment to decide if the benefits are likely to be realized and whether the costs are affordable. In order to make this kind of assessment, it is necessary to thoroughly understand the application and the decision factors that affect its success (see Table 1). Selecting the Best Hardware and Software. One of the most difficult aspects of getting started with an administrative application is the selection of the appropriate hardware and software. The user knows what he or she wants the system to accomplish and now must find the right program and computer. There are many factors to be examined: how easy is the system to use, how much training is required, does the system do everything desired, how flexible is the system in terms of adding new capabilities or capacity, and is the system compatible with existing hardware and software? …