Stakeholders

There are three commonalities between diverse groups of stakeholders when it comes time to deal with technology integration.

What have you done for me lately?
Stakeholders should receive hard evidence that technology use improves student motivation, improves test scores, and is an integral part of the educational process.
Black is this year's pink.
Technology is not a fad and is not a passing fashion. Technology is not going to be used for technology's sake but rather as a crucial tool.
The check is in the mail...
A 1:1 approach can actually reduce costs through replacing the need for textbooks alone. It will be a cost effective means to reach curricular goals.

21st Century Skills

There is a rather large corporate entity at the northern edge of our school district that manufactures world-class quality vehicles (No name - but Let's Go Places). They are an excellent community neighbor. I was at a meeting a few years back where our Superintendent was basically asking: "What would YOU like us to be doing to prepare our students for the work force after college?" We pretty consistently send 85%+ of our graduates on to post-secondary education.

Their answer was quite simple about the qualities they wanted in a potential employee:

1) Be able to work as part of a team

2) Be able to express yourself clearly 

3) Come to work to work

Notice - no mention of robotics, STEM, technology, Cultural Touchstones, Extra-Curricular Activities, Sports (gasp! heresy!), Fine Arts - and so on. 

I have to say this heavily influences me to pick "Ways of working. Communication and collaboration."

I need to focus on building students' abilities to work together. I do many team projects. The not-so-hidden agenda is about getting everyone in the group to contribute - using each person's strengths - developing leadership - accepting a team role.

I need to focus on what I consider a multiple layered approach to communication - being able to deliver content in multiple formats tailored for diverse and separate methods from 7 seconds in Vine to overkill minutes in YouTube and/or from brevity in Twitter to the verbosity of a Blog post (not mine, of course).