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Why is most research on business issues so useless? Why doesn't it drive the results that businesses require? Organizations may have commissioned reports on new markets, or Second Life, or Web 2.0, or outsourcing or re-insourcing, but why don't the reports have a richer impact?

I have come to the fairly unambiguous conclusion: most business research sits unused on shelves. It is thus a valid question to ask, especially in tightening budgets, why is that so? Is that inevitable? And, to a lesser degree, who's fault is that?

The big problem is that most business research relies on the same faulty intellectual constructs as other forms of linear content - it relies on linear analysis, case studies, and inspirational examples. And like with movies and magazines, they impress us with their cleverness but don't actually enable effective action (or any action, except more presentations), because they ar not designed to. The reports focus on knowing, not doing. The people at the receiving end of such research seldom turn the concepts into productive actions, because the research does not help them enough in doing so. At best, most research I have studied only takes the reader on 20% of the journey.

I remain very, very concerned with the notion that all we have to do is let the kids connect with the world -- just like they do on Facebook or MySpace -- and the kids will learn. There's a fallacy there, and my experience with how much really deep teaching of digital ethics we've had to do at SLA to counter all that the kids come in the door thinking about the digital world.

is there much of an honest discussion of just how hard implementation of these ideas actually is.

And the problem is that our entire structure has to change to make it easier. You can't teach 150 kids a day this way... you can't have traditional credit hours... you have to find new ways to look at your classroom. Everything from school design to teacher contracts to class size and teacher load to curriculum and assessment -- everything we do in schools -- has to be on the table for change if we are to achieve the kind of schools that video is speaking about. The only thing that shouldn't be on the table, and that the video actually hints that it should be, is the need for teachers in their day to day lives-- the adults who can make a deep profound impact in kids' lives.

The education sector bias (and related legal prohibitions) against investment by private companies is remarkable in contrast to other public delivery systems.

We don't mind if textbook publishers update versions, but hackles go up when private operators propose school management. Most of this is just disguised job protection; the rest is historical bias.

Mosaica and NHA are offering a service that is clearly superior to near by public schools and doing it for less money. They usually have to provide their own facility with no public funding. Yet they are prohibited from holding charters directly in most states. They find or construct a non-profit corporation which seeks a charter and then contracts with them for school management services. They run the risk of being kicked out of a school that they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to open.

believe that social justice educators must ask ourselves and our schools: What are the ethics and power structures involved in using a technology, and how do we create a learning environment to discuss and track the impact of technology on the cognitive, social and emotional development of both students and educators.

The FADE model—Foundation, Atmosphere, Design, Environment—creates the context of Quantum Learning. We know when the context is strong, it 'fades' into the background and creates the structure for learning to occur.

The Quantum Learning framework for student learning is expressed in 5 Tenets of Learning: Everything Speaks: Everything, from surroundings and tone of voice to distribution of materials, conveys an important message about learning. Everything is On Purpose: Everything we do has an intended purpose. Experience Before Label: Students make meaning and transfer new content into long-term memory by connecting to existing schema. Learning is best facilitated when students experience the information in some aspect before they acquire labels for what is being learned. Acknowledge Every Effort: Acknowledgment of each student's effort encourages learning and experimentation. If It's Worth Learning, It's Worth Celebrating!: Celebration provides feedback regarding progress and increases positive emotional associations with the learning.

Quantum Learning