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How does a school system with poor performance become good? And how does one with good performance become excellent?

Jane Hart is the Founder of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, one of the most visited learning sites on the Web. In her monthly column for eLearn she shares some "gems"-useful or valuable tools, resources, and products she has unearthed for learning and performance improvement/support. In this month's column she lists her 10 favorite articles from 2011.

For Wall Street Occupiers or other decriers of the "social injustice" of college tuition, here's a curveball bound to scramble your worldview: a totally free college education regardless of your academic performance or background.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) will announce on Monday that they intend to launch an online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world.

Myself, along with many educators and education policymakers, were pleased to receive news that Korea had topped the OECD's Digital Reading Assessment (DRA).  We were even more encouraged by the results showing a significant percentage of students proficient at the highest scale of digital reading, and the small proportion of low-performing students.

"Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point."

This sixth volume of PISA 2009 results explores students' use of information technologies to learn. . In 2009, students in 19 countries and economies took a PISA test using computers which tested their ability to navigate and evaluate information on line. Students also filled in a background questionnaire providing information on their use of computers both in school and at home.