2.3 Towards the virtual k-12 educational organization: an emerging  (Page 4/11)

Consider some other structural issues that change how a school district thinks about capacity when digital learning is factored into the day-to-day process of learning:

1. Class size—What is the optimum number of students a teacher can work within a virtual environment?
2. Physical space—Will the brick and mortar classroom be less of a need when students and teachers use digital learning space?
3. Anytime learning—Will virtual learning extend the school day for teachers and students?
4. Virtual learning—Does software replace a brick and mortar classroom and face-to-face lecture with online asynchronous individualized learning?

One school leader claimed time and learning would change dramatically in the future. “We are going away from Carnegie units and are heading towards standards-based mastery—period. I know it’s going. I know we’re headed there.”

The leadership expectation for understanding software

The typical preparation of school administrators involves a curriculum based upon a set of standards widely accepted as representative of what school leaders should know and do to perform at high levels of skill (CCSSO, 2008; ELCC, 2011). One of those standards—Standard three—requires an aspiring school principal to manage the school organization and maintain a conducive learning environment: “Education leaders ensure the success of all students by managing organizational systems and resources for a safe, high performing learning environment” (CCSSO, 2008, p. 19). More specifically, “A building-level education leader applies knowledge that promotes the success of every student by ensuring the management of the school organization, operation, and resources through monitoring and evaluating the school management and operational systems; efficiently using human, fiscal, and technological resources in a school environment (ELCC, 2011, p. 5) . This school district had an evolving, yet increasing expectation for school principals in the area of technology and its use as an organizational system, and as a teaching and learning instrument:

"I think ten years ago or fifteen years ago when we were hiring principals we were looking for people who could manage a building, who could deal with parents, who could handle the management of the building. That has evolved over the course of time to be, ‘We want principals now who are instructional leaders and instructional leadership now means more than comfort level, an expectation—a demand—that technology be part . . . properties of technology be part of that whole instruction."

Performance as a school principal still requires the management and operation of the building. The position, however, is expanding its expectations and skill competencies to manage and lead instructional improvement within a technology rich environment:

"They, some, have a really, really basic understanding. Some have a really advanced understanding. And, hopefully, the administrator/principal is going into all of those different classrooms and seeing the potential of how technology could be used in so many different ways . . . It’s not that they need to know how to do everything, it’s that they need to know that it’s possible and that it could be done in this new way. They need to know that I could set my MacBook down and use the built-in camera to record a short video using the whole class, or I could have my students contacting other students in another location using Chat Client. That sort of thing."