When it comes to engaging technology, senior leaders of colleges have always been a diverse lot on an island of their own, a somewhat Galapagos zone: swimming lizards, blue-footed birds, and a tropical penguin or two.  Sheltered from the learning curves of the very tools that drive their institutions by landscapes of clerical staff and sycophants, college presidents and the like have been given the easy ride. When queried about this lack of technological engagement, rationalizations abound, typically reduced to a vernacular rich with ‘blue sky’ and ‘winds of change’ metaphors. Often is heard that senior leadership is much too busy with the governance of the institution—after all, senior leaders are hired for vision and all other abstract things deemed intellectual. Engaging with technology, a utility tethered to users by a keyboard umbilical, always appeared somewhat clerical and as such, delegated without a moment’s reflection. And given the 24/7 responsibilities that come with such jobs, this is not surprising. Sure there are a some college leaders who are techno junkies, but they are few and far between. In many cases, those who have come around to engaging the technology do so on their own terms—creating folklore for college IT departments who’ve had to retrofit almost everything in the toolbox to align 21^st century technology with 20^th century skills and strong personal preference. So has been the mashless state of technology integration in most of the Academy’s executive suites for the last 25 years. An unhealthy, frustrating state. 

When senior college leaders keep at arm’s length from technology, innovation is pinched to a slow crawl. Budgets incorporating innovative technology integration and development are often eclipsed by those delivering tangible meat and potatoes products. This gives rise to the dumbed down tech proposal that sacrifices innovation for ease of comprehension and a garnish of concrete deliverables. Such proposals, while not exactly DOA, seldom make it back into the creative canopies that hatched the out-of-the-box thinking. There is also a lost in translation factor to contend with here. Typically, senior leaders filter decision making through a technology consigliere, who may have their own agenda or are themselves one of the retrofits whose exploits are celebrated in song at the IT beer bust.

But things are changing…when centenarians text you, imoms tweet to their tweeps, and third graders foursquare for wildlife, you have to be very sleepy, Rip Van Winkle sleepy, not to see that everyone, yes everyone, is now connecting to someone in some meaningful way through social media technologies. In addition, the portability of information, via the cloud, and the portability of hardware, via smart phones, has fueled this engagement with technology at many different levels with many different stakeholders. Such innovation presents new opportunity for both institutions of higher education and their busy senior leadership. Like the imoms, college leaders are extremely pressed for time with multiple demands imposed on them by multiple constituencies. But what we've learned from groups like imoms is that social media means that everyone can be an online learner--in fact, we can conclude that we are all online learners, and higher education leaders are no exception.

The fact that we are all currently engaged in online learning on a day-to-day basis, creates many new opportunities for innovative technology integration on campus, with an important caveat: in the spirit of Web 2.0 technologies, all stakeholders (especially students) bring ideas to the table. Over time this group could, and in fact must, include the college’s senior leadership. As they embark on their own online learning adventures with Social Media, we will see a much more engaged set of higher education leaders who will naturally move more and more to the center of on-campus technology debates. They will weigh in on matters relating to Web 2.0 applications for learning, marketing, and internal communications from a much better informed (or practitioner's) perspective. This new voice will be a welcome addition, allowing for a more direct and open engagement with technology innovation on campus. Already I have had the opportunity to follow several college presidents on twitter (Hal Higdon—Ozarks Technical Community College, Linda Glasscock—North Lake College, Karen Stout—Montgomery County Community College), reading their tweets and retweets as they go about their day. The social media are new for many of them but they are embracing it as part of their day-to-day communication routines. Finally the foundations of common ground between senior staff and the campus technocrats are being poured by external factors, where all players initially engage on an equal footing. Now is the time to engage college leaders and begin having real discussions about the innovative use of technology and its benefits to both learners and the daily operations of a campus. More and more, through their actual participation in social networks, college leaders are becoming better aquainted with the collaborative powers of technology and better equipped to fold such powers into the fabric of the institutions they lead. And that is a good thing.