TICAL’s mission:
Helping K-12 educational leaders provide informed and effective leadership through innovation to improve education.
Educational leaders are busy people with a big job to do! The Internet offers a tremendous range of information, tools, and resources that can help them lead their schools and districts to excellence. But what leader has time to search and sift through hundreds of web pages to find the right resource for right now?
Seeing this challenge, in 1999 the California Department of Education (CDE) commissioned the Santa Cruz County Office of Education to develop a centralized repository of technology-related resources and professional development opportunities for educational leaders. The Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership (TICAL) and tical.org were born in 1999. Over the past two decades TICAL has grown to be the go-to organization to support innovation in educational leadership, from peer-to-peer support and online resources, to a statewide conference and ongoing trainings.
Located at tical.org is information that will help educational leaders in finding resources to assist in responding to the day-to-day needs of their jobs, whether they are site level leaders, innovators, principals, coaches, or district superintendents, etc. These resources have been collected and organized by a cadre of technology-savvy, practicing leaders and met criteria judged to be of value to other educational leaders. The heart of innovative resources on the site are drawn from Future Ready Schools & ISTE and a wide variety of other relevant sources.
The Website
TICAL’s website provides a tremendous range of carefully categorized, annotated tools and resources relating to 21st century leadership that are used by practicing educators.
Each TICAL resource addresses one or more of the following focus areas:
- On-Going Professional Development
- Equity and Accessibility
- Digital Citizenship and Privacy
- Parental Engagement
- Data-Informed Analytics
- Transformative Teaching and Learning
The Cadre
TICAL cadre members are a network of educational leaders who were selected for their success and leadership skills in education. They contribute content to the website and provide coaching in the strategic implementation of research-based effective teaching and learning models:
- Leaders Creating Innovative Learning Environments to Support Equitable Opportunities (FRS)
- Leaders using technology to increase inclusion and digital citizenship practices (ISTE}
- Leaders engaging others in establishing a vision, strategic plan and ongoing evaluation cycle for transforming learning with technology (ISTE)
The Symposium
A Leadership Symposium is held annually in California. Known as Leadership 3.0 (www.lead3.org), this event is a collaboration with the Association of California School Administrators. (ACSA), Computer Using Educators, Inc. (CUE), and TICAL. It is truly for educational leaders, by educational leaders and brings together colleagues working at the nexus of:
- Leadership
- Innovation
- Technology
TICAL Education Technology Support Needs Assessment, May, 2019