If you are teaching you had some control over your teaching assignment.  You choose the level to be certified in, you chose your major in college or the certification tests to complete.  Even when there is a move in assignment generally you are consulted to some degree (here’s hoping anyway).

But imagine a job where you were hired for your high degree of competency in managing people and your in-depth knowledge of educational pedagogy, your familiarity with educational case law and your general people-friendly personality and then a topic sneaks up on you in which you feel you are tremendously ill-prepared. Let’s say you are hired to be the head of and district/county department or the superintendent him/herself. And Then . . . they expect that person, who is probably a veteran teacher, to suddenly be ‘up’ on all the technology we are being bombarded with today.

Edtechdigest pointed me in the direction of COSNs Empowering the 21st Century Superintendent; if you have a personal connection with someone in a place of educational leadership share this download with them: Five Themes and Action Steps for Technology Leadership.

Education lags behind every other major industry in using technology effectively as a tool for productivity, learning, communications and creativity.

I like the inclusion of what I consider to be essential and influential readings/reports with the Themes/Action Steps:

The Horizon Report, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World, ISTE Nets, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, A Whole New Mind: Why
Right Brainers Will Rule the Future
, and Empowering Students with Technology.

Look for documents such as this with texts so visibly referenced and refer them to the highest educational office with which you have contact.  This is the type of educating that any person in the school can do to help prepare our decision makers for the tough choices in technology they will surely encounter.

If you have a network in your system that you can pass such items to that is great, but if not start thinking about how you can start one to crowd source this large amount of learning the world is asking of our educational leaders.