Independent School Collaboration

Mobile phones, computers everywhere, hypertext, social networking, collaborative cognition (from Wikipedia on up), Google, text-messaging, Twitter, audiobooks, digital texts, text-to-speech, speech recognition, flexible formatting - these are not "add ons" to the world of education, they are the world of education. This is how humans in this century talk, read, communicate, learn. And learning to use these technologies effectively, efficiently, and intelligently must be at the heart of our educational strategies.

Maybe worse than irrelevant. Maybe dangerous. The belief that "your" experience is relevant leads to a nightmare loop. Students who behave, and learn, most like their teachers do the best in classrooms. Teachers see this reflection as proof of their own competence - "The best students are just like me." And thus all who are "different" in any way - race, class, ability, temperament, preferences - are left out of the success story.

hundreds of thousands of Web-empowered volunteers are able to very efficiently dedicate small slices of their discretionary time, the traditional experts – professors, journalists, authors and filmmakers – need to be compensated for their effort, since expertise is what they have to sell.

With almost all of the world's codified knowledge at your fingertips, why should you spend increasingly scarce attention loading up your own mind just in case you may some day need this particular fact or concept? Far better, one might argue, to access efficiently what you need, when you need it. This depends, of course, on building up a sufficient internalized structure of concepts to be able to link with the online store of knowledge. How to teach this is perhaps the greatest challenge and opportunity facing educators in the 21st century.

Today’s world requires a different leadership style — moving more into a collaboration and teamwork, including learning how to use Web 2.0 technologies.

“John, if you don’t do it our company won’t learn how to do this. It won’t be built into our DNA for the way we interface with customers, our employees. The top has to walk the talk.” I was expecting text blogging and we did video blogging.

By the second one, I realized this was going to transform communications — not just for the C.E.O., but it would change how we do business.

I believe that the secret to change lies in developing the social fabric, capacity and connectedness found in communities of practice and learning networks.

building a new future- one that focuses on the gifts each teacher, student, parent and leader

Though they knew their facts, the students could not form interpretations or reach conclusions when given historical material

The study identified three important best practices related to online instruction: “Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection.” The study seems to indicate that online learning environments improve student learning when students are able to manipulate instruction based on their particular learning needs or when the online curriculum provides learning mechanisms that trigger student reflection or self monitoring of learning. Online learning is more effective when the curriculum includes blended learning elements (e.g., face-to-face interaction, online collaboration, independent practice, etc.). Effective online learning environments include a variety of learning activities. The simple inclusion of online learning activities such as video or online quizzes do not necessarily improve student learning. Although these sorts of instructional activities are often recommended by educators, the study was not able to find a significant connection between the activities and improved student achievement.