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He clears away distractions and allows himself to focus on the task at hand

More isn’t necessarily better.

focus on quality, on innovation, on creativity.

Building a Learning Community Palloff and Pratt recommend seven basic steps for building a successful learning community. These include: clearly defining the purpose of the community, creating a distinctive gathering place for the group, promoting effective leadership from within, defining norms and a clear code of conduct, allowing for a range of member roles, allowing for and facilitating of subgroups, and allowing members to resolve their own disputes. The authors caution that it is possible to develop a community that has strong social connections between the students, but where very little learning actually takes place. Thus, it is important that the instructor be actively engaged in the process and encourages students who stray from the learning goals of the course. Specifically, the authors recommend: (1) engaging students with subject matter, (2) accounting for attendance and participation, (3) working with students who do not participate, (4) understanding the signs of when a student is in trouble, and (5) building online communities that accommodate personal interaction. Indicators of a Successful Learning Community You can tell if the learning community is working when you see: active interaction, sharing of resources among students, collaborative learning evidenced by comments directed primarily student to student rather than student to instructor, socially constructed meaning evidenced by agreement or questioning, with the intent to achieve agreement on issues of meaning, and expressions of support and encouragement exchanged between students, as well as willingness to critically evaluate the work of others. Finally, they suggest that the keys to successful learning communities are honesty, responsiveness, relevance, respect, openness, and empowerment. Palloff, R.M. & Pratt, K. (1999). Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

"Good teachers are the magic in the classroom. "Personal computers aren't magic, they are just a tool. What you need to make the educational process work is a good teacher who is knowledgeable in the subject and can get kids excited."

"Nations are as strong as their educational systems. "The rest of the emerging world recognises this is the key to staying competitive." He went on: "It's time our political leaders acknowledged that and declare there is a crisis and do something about it."

Respect should be inculcated from birth, and is best learned by example.  As for the ethical mind, that has been my chief research concern for the past 15 years.

disciplined (depth), synthesizing (breadth) and creative (stretch). There may be some division of labor across individuals, but everyone should have at least some experience with each kind of mind, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to work productively with others.

Why Magnatune is not evil We work directly with independent musicians world-wide to give you downloads of MP3s and perfect-quality WAV files. We never work with major labels, and our musicians always get 50%. You can listen to every album in its entirety before buying or becoming a member.

Digital natives and technologies of cooperation are combining to create a generation of amplified individuals. These organizational “superheroes” will remake organizational models through their highly social, collective, improvisational practices and their augmented human capacities. These new models will thrive in a world of social networks; information proliferation, transparency, and saturation; and rapid change. As digital natives enter learning professions, and as existing educators and students become amplified, their extended human capacities will challenge traditional ways of organizing learning and will amplify schools, districts, and other learning organizations. 

 These individuals are highly social, collective, improvisational and augmented. 

Together, these attributes enable several amplified organizational practices - open leadership and sociability, beta building, collective sensemaking, and transliteracy - that support more flexible responses to change and stimulate innovation