2.3 Towards the virtual k-12 educational organization: an emerging  (Page 7/11)

"I think you need a feedback mechanism for the student immediately because one, the students want to know right away if they got the answer right or where they are on the test. The teachers should know they are hitting the target with whatever percentile they’re comfortable with—90%, 80%, 70%.—for the students to get it . . . for the teacher to say I’ve successfully got all that I could in terms of learning in the students."

Organizational and pedagogical gap in adoption of technology/software

This study highlighted a lagging adoption on the part of teachers and administrators to embrace technology tools for purposes of (1) organizing a virtual structure for schooling, and (2) using software tools to facilitate learning. Whether or not the knowledge of, and uses for, software tools made sense or had validity there was a cautious acceptance in what teachers and other school leaders would readily adopt and implement in regard to technology and software innovation. The stages of Rogers’ (1993) innovation-decision process outlines how teachers and administrators moved over a period of five-eight years to the technology and software advancements in this district:

1. Knowledge occurs when an individual (or other decision-making unit) is exposed to an innovation’s existence and gains an understanding of how it functions.
2. Persuasion occurs when an individual (or other decision-making unit) forms a favorable or an unfavorable attitude towards the innovation.
3. Decision takes place when an individual (or other decision-making unit) engages in activities that lead to a choice to adopt or reject the innovation.
4. Implementation occurs when an individual (or other decision-making unit) puts a new idea into use.
5. Confirmation takes place when an individual seeks reinforcement of an innovation-decision already made, but he or she may reverse this previous decision if exposed to conflicting messages about the innovation. (p. 163)

In this study there was recognition that the educational delivery system, as well as teaching and learning, were evolving into something different from what the schools, classrooms, teaching and learning looked like in the recent past. As one school leader explained, “Education tends to move pretty slowly. It probably took forty years to get the overhead projector out of the bowling alley into the classroom.” And, the problem isn’t only one of resistance to change. It is also an incremental adaptation of the school district bureaucracy to changes in physical space, teaching, learning, and use of time to support the learning process. According to another school leader:

"Whether there’s a piece of technology involved or not, I think that the space has to change to reflect what’s going on more and more with teaching and learning and that is that people are realizing that it is a social activity and it is something that we do in a variety of modes, that we don’t just “sit and get” but that we gather together and we reflect quietly and we work on projects in small groups and we collaborate and we build and . . . I mean so I need space that allows me the flexibility to jump from a lecture."