0.7 Berry, j. (october 2011). leading with twenty-first century  (Page 9/9)

In this study it appeared that the virtual educational organization was emerging (causing disruption to the bureaucratic organization) as an integrated system within the traditional bureaucratic educational organization. The virtual educational organization was not an emerging entity unto itself but an emerging structure evolving and integrating with the present day K-12 school district.

The Virtual Educational Organization is a system of education designed around software that will be experienced by the teacher and student as formal structures for teaching and learning. These structures are only now being designed and built by the school district as it adopts the technology and software tools for delivery of learning supported by the educational organization.

Summary

The emerging K-12 educational organization has a virtual structure that includes 1) connectivity to the Internet that expands the idea/definition of classroom. Teaching and learning will be virtual with connectivity to the primary learning organization (which may/may not be the traditional school district); 2) dynamic software to engage, enhance, and guide the student learning experience; 3) integration of software with an individual teacher’s own approach and understanding of pedagogy and student learning; 4) an emerging culture that blends virtual learning with the more traditional face-to-face (lecture/discussion) instructional approach.

The adoption of technology in education should be understood as a slow evolution of educational bureaucracy in building capacity for how software will be used in K-12 learning. Technology, and specifically software, is in a formative stage of adoption for constructing virtual organizational structures. From piecing together the evidence of how one school district is moving forward to address teaching and learning within a technology rich system:

1. The software to structure and organize a hybrid digital/brick and mortar educational organization will accelerate the development of a different pedagogy for teaching and a different (more personalized?) form of learning;
2. The slow rate of organizational change is a condition of bureaucracy. Technology adoption by school systems needs to be understood in context to the nature and condition of the educational bureaucracy as it adapts to changes in the external environment.

Christensen et al (2008) claim that by 2019—if one looks at the logarithmic growth of online delivery of the high school curriculum—“50 percent of high school courses will be delivered online. In other words, within a few years, after a long period of incubation, the world is likely to begin flipping rapidly to student-centric online technology” (p. 98). The significance of Christensen’s projection is based upon the accelerating acceptance and expansion of the virtual educational delivery system. This school district is evolving from the brick and mortar system of educational delivery to a blended system of virtual and bureaucratic delivery . . . and provides evidence that Christensen’s prediction is on track.

Changes to the current educational system will require the adults who govern and control the system to recast it as a functional, resilient, and flexible form of learning that is up-to-the-challenge of educating every child to a level of quality that is unprecedented in human history. Pink (2005) described the twenty-first century as the rise of the conceptual age in order to create new knowledge to accelerate economic growth and quality of life. As meaningful as learning should be for students, it needs to be as meaningful for the adults involved in the great transition of knowledge transmission during the twenty-first century. The knowledge required for leading and teaching during this transition is about organizing for learning in a way that better serves children and society. The adults of the present day educational system will need to re-conceptualize the present day school system and recast it for a more student-centered form of learning in the twenty-first century. This case study indicates that one district is moving in a more deliberate way to change how it organizes for teaching and learning in an age of technology.

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