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The more students have an opportunity to read, speak and write the more they are going to understand the power of words.

The moment students craft words meant not just for the teacher and a few other peers, but for the wider world, is the moment students learn that a misplaced, mispronounced, or misspelled word has consequences far beyond a grade. These authentic learning opportunities are crucial to prepare students for the new realities of a more global and transparent world.

Students (and teachers) need to understand that everything they do communicates, whether they know what they are communicating or not.

Once students really figure out who they are and what they stand for then they can more comfortably be themselves. However, an important social skill that many students have difficulty grasping is knowing appropriate social norms in various settings.

Anyone can be a teacher... if you are alert and willing to learn from others. We need to teach students to be alert and willing to learn from sources other than textbooks. We need to teach students how to create and cultivate learning from a personal learning network, in order to extend the traditional capabilities of school from the limited hours of the school day to the unlimited hours beyond the school day. The informal classroom of life offers lessons far more valuable than the classroom if only we are open to learning from each other each and every day.

The $650 million Invest in Innovation Fund (i3) will soon be doled out primarily to school districts -- folks with very little ability to invest in, manage, or scale innovation. Unlike the Department of Energy, public-private partnerships are prohibited. If the US Department of Education was able to invest half of i3 in private ventures, it would be multiplied several times over by private investment (10x in some cases), it would fund scalable enterprises with the potential for national impact, and the innovation would be sustained by a business model.

We send our kids to privately run hospitals, we travel over privately constructed roads, and we buy power from private companies. Private sector investment and innovation should play a more important role in American education.