Skip to content

Scott McLeod

Associate Professor of Educational Administration, Iowa State University

Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Kentucky. He also is the Founding Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), the nation’s only academic center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators, and was a co-creator of the wildly popular video series, Did You Know? (Shift Happens). He has received numerous national awards for his technology leadership work, including recognitions from the cable industry, Phi Delta Kappa, and the National School Boards Association. In Spring 2011 he was a Visiting Canterbury Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Dr. McLeod blogs regularly about technology leadership issues at Dangerously Irrelevant and Mind Dump, and occasionally at The Huffington Post. He can be reached at scottmcleod.net.


Back in March I posted that I was a finalist for the cable industry’s Leaders in Learning Awards . Last Wednesday I was officially named a winner . I spent […]
Will Richardson’s post covered the article in the New York Times about the growing popularity of virtual worlds for tweens (and younger). Think Club Penguin, Webkinz, etc. Will’s post included […]
Five days … twenty posts on school change … did we learn anything? Miguel Guhlin says, “Just finished skimming your entries. . . . Now, what do I do on […]
Dede, Honan, & Peters (Eds.). (2005). Scaling up success: Lessons from technology-based educational improvement. How do we take successful programs and best practices serving a few classrooms or students and […]
Some quotes that I’ve used on this blog in the past… They say, “Sure, we need change.”I say we need revolution now. They say, “We can’t handle this much change.”I […]
Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter , who is perhaps our nation’s leading expert on organizational change, outlines ten reasons that drive resistance to educational change initiatives: Surprise, Surprise! Decisions or requests […]
Gladwell. (2002). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. Connectors, mavens, and salesmen. These are the folks you want as your allies. These people may or […]
This is the way we ought to be approaching our change initiatives, whether directed at students, staff, parents… [from http://tinyurl.com/2a9rt5]
n One step is easy. One step isn’t enough. n Two steps is tempting. Two steps means that everyone understandsnwhat you’re up to when you pitch an idea to them. […]
Peter Block, author of The Empowered Manager , noted that the apparent power of those at the top is much less than absolute. What leaders can do from the top […]
Buckingham & Coffman. (1999). First, break all the rules: What the world’s greatest managers do differently. A really, really great book for leaders and change agents.
n Most organizations are paralyzed, stuck in a rut, staring at the growth paradox. On one hand, they understand all the good things that will come with growth. On the […]
[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog] nn Why haven’t schools changed more? Maybe because they can’t. n In their 2005 Phi Delta Kappan article, Can Schools Improve?, Christensen, Aaron, & Clark […]
Collins. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap… and others don’t. Local communities strongly believe that their schools are good. ‘Good is the enemy of great.’ [see […]
[from http://tinyurl.com/aofe8] What would school organizations be like if every employee had the opportunity to pursue Option B? As Kathy Sierra notes, ‘What if the price for working on weakness […]
Measure just about anything, and the distribution . . . almost always comes out as a perfect bell curve. . . . [The bell curve] even applies to the energy […]
Most educational administration graduate students can tell you about Bolman & Deal’s leadership frameworks . The frames help change agents conceptualize different approaches to an issue. Depending on the circumstances, […]
Pfeffer & Sutton. (2000). The knowing-doing gap: How smart companies turn knowledge into action. Countless leaders know what they should do. But yet desired change fails to happen. Here’s why.
There are two kinds of organizations. One kind likes to be on the cutting edge . . . to embrace the new. The other kind fears that, and holds back. […]
Many of you are familiar with Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory, even if you didn’t know its formal name. Dr. Everett Rogers is probably most famous for popularizing the following […]
Change. It’s inevitable. It happens whether we want it to or not. But sometimes we embrace it with open arms and sometimes it drags us kicking and screaming… Many have […]
Here’s a great quote by Dr. Kevin Dettmar , professor of English and cultural studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, from his recent article, Earbuds and Mosh Pits , in […]
Random musings. Half-finished (and quite possibly half-baked) thoughts.nThings that have caught my eye… n One of the most interesting articles I’ve read in a longntime n Attractingnthe twentysomething worker. Describes […]