Webinar Recap: Tech Tools for Principal Engagement

Do you run your school from your phone? According to presenter Adam Welcome, you should be.
Communicator
January 2019, Volume 42, Issue 5

Principal and education author Adam Welcome led a recent webinar on Tech Tools for Principal Engagement, where he helped self-proclaimed technically challenged leaders—and those who are technically skilled but wanted a refresher—understand what tools are available and how they could use them to help build their practice. Here are three top tools Welcome keeps in his arsenal and his suggestions on how to use them.

Digitize your calendar. Keeping a paper calendar is a thing of the past. Make sure your calendar is digitized and that your office manager can access it. Consider also having a calendar for IEPs. To keep parents in the know, let them subscribe to the school calendar. Welcome believes that principals should be able to run their schools (mostly) from their phones.

Go all in on social media. Twitter is where you meet with other educators. Instagram is where you share your school’s story. He recommends making it a goal to get every single teacher on Twitter. It makes education more fun, but it also helps the school community more connected. More and more parents are on Instagram, so keep them updated on what’s happening at your school. Don’t have time to post on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook? Bonus: Check out IFTTT (If That Then This), which can help you post to all three accounts at once.

Connect with Voxer. It’s a free app that basically allows you to communicate via voice messages and text. It’s a workaround for those who don’t have phone numbers for everyone in the education community. Because who does? It works for running a school, too. Welcome uses it exclusively over email in his school.

To check out Welcome’s full list of tech tools, download the presentation or watch the full webinar. To find out what webinars you might have missed, log in to the NAESP Webinar page.

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