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n the pursuit of these new learning environments we find ourselves asking those wonderfully fundamental questions: What are “the basics” and “basic literacy skills” today? How might our students best learn them? How are schools/classrooms/desks/subjects/schedules/teachers necessary to this learning process, and how are they not? And these are the best kinds of questions, because their best answers are just more questions. And so we find ourselves exactly where any great learner would want to be, on a quest, asking question after question after question.

But it's not about the tools. It's not about layering expensive technology on top of the traditional curriculum. Instead, it's about addressing the new needs of modern learners in entirely new ways. And once we understand that it's about learning, our questions reframe themselves in terms of the ecological shifts we need to make: What do we mean by learning? What does it mean to be literate in a networked, connected world? What does it mean to be educated? What do students need to know and be able to do to be successful in their futures? Educators must lead inclusive conversations in their communities around such questions to better inform decisions about technology and change.

Right now, the web requires us to reconsider the ecology of schools, not just the technologies we use in them. We must start long-term, broad, inclusive conversations about what teaching, learning, and being educated mean in light of the new technologies we now have available to us. Just like business, politics, journalism, music, and a host of other long-standing institutions that the web has rocked at their foundations, education will be and is being changed. To understand the implications fully, we need to start with the questions that focus on our students—and not just on the stuff.

Learning is always personal, intimate, specific. Our discussions of the pros and cons of different kinds of learning have to be equally so. To settle for any less — in one direction or the other — is to shortchange one of the most important conversations we can be having right now.

1. What if… a community received quarterly dashboard updates correlating the number of community mentoring hours, internships or even online parental homework assistance with critical student success factors such as student attendance, school climate and academic performance?

2. What if… doing something that is good for you, such as enrolling in a spinning class, could offset the electricity costs for schools?

3. What if… we replaced conventional currencies with other value exchanges that made it possible for parents and community members to contribute subject matter expertise or other resources to schools in exchange for extended hour care for their children or use of school facilities?

What really is happening is the line between our work life and our social life is becoming blurred more and more every day

This hyper-connected, always-on, world we now live in is making it so our social life and work life are always intermixing. It’s your bosses ability to call you on the cell at 9pm to talk work, or the idea that you’ll read and answer e-mails via your BlackBerry after you leave the office. The employers are taking advantage of this hyper-connected world as well….why do you think they bought you a company cell phone? They still only pay you to work 8 hours a day.

We were pretty shocked to discover the dominant effect of negative events on inner work life – people’s mostly-hidden emotions, perceptions, and motivations at work. Setbacks have a negative effect on inner work life that’s 2-3 times stronger than the positive effect of progress. When we checked into whether other researchers had found something similar, we learned that it’s a general psychological effect; “bad is stronger than good.” The reason could be evolutionary. Maybe we pay more attention to negatives, and are more affected by them, out of self-preservation. So – because positive inner work life is so important for top performance, leaders should do whatever they can to root out negative forces.

Religiously protect at least 20 minutes – and, ideally, much more – every day, to tackle something in the work that matters most to you. Hide in an empty conference room, if you have to, or sneak out in disguise to a nearby coffee shop. Then make note of any progress you made (even if it was a small win), and decide where to pick up again the next day. The progress, and the mini-celebration of simply noting it, can lift your inner work life.

Bosses can religiously protect at least 5 minutes, every day, to think about the progress and setbacks of their team, and what enabled or inhibited that progress. The daily review should end with a plan to do one thing, the following day, that’s most likely to facilitate progress – even if that progress is only a small win. I think this practice, if used widely, could make a real difference in organizational performance and employee inner work life. And good inner work life isn’t only a matter of employee retention or the bottom line. It’s a matter of human dignity.