Jennie Magiera, educator turned chief technology officer in Chicago, believes that the best edtech administrators are former teachers and shared with EdSurge her reasoning why.

Before Magiera became a CTO for an entire district, she spent seven years as a classroom teacher and feels that the experience in the classroom helped her become good at her current, expanded role as an administrator.

For the past several years as an administrator, even, she's continued teaching a class once a week because she says "[i]t's really informed the way that I lead, and the way that I work from a higher vantage point, in terms of how things affect schools and parents and communities."

"From my current role, I'm still trying to stay in the classroom, which people think is kooky because you don't see a lot of CTOs teaching fifth grade. But I truly believe that if our end goal is always supporting students, I need that perspective and to remember what that is to work with kids on a firsthand basis," she told EdSurge.

She feels from her experience that districts benefit most from administrators who have taught and are familiar with edtech before taking a leadership position in administering.

"To lead schools, to lead districts, to support teachers, I feel like you had to have truly walked the walked for enough time where it became who you were. And I know we're getting a little existentialist, but I see that my district school instructional leaders who I learned from were those who taught for a long time," she said.

Like many seasoned administrators, she also warns against educators and administrators viewing edtech as the instruction as opposed to a guide to instruction.

"But one common miscommunication I see is the role of technology in the classroom. Sometimes, administrators see technology as a supercharged gasoline to push forward instruction," she said.

Read the full story here and comment with your thoughts below.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

07/20/2015