Think you have the skills it takes to succeed as a leader? Take our quiz and find out if a climb to the top is in your future.

Tech visionary Lawrence Lessig made a sobering prediction Tuesday at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference: "There's going to be an i-9/11 event," he said, "an event that demonstrates the instability of the Internet, and that inspires the government to a response." He said he believes this digital disaster - a major hacker attack or other act of cyber-terrorism in the next 10 years - will prompt the U.S. government to clamp down on Internet freedoms in an online parallel to the Patriot Act.

When - Thursday, August 21, 2008 2pm, ET Description - School administrators across the country are working hard to offer healthy and attractive choices in their competitive food and beverage offerings. Still, concerns persist about inconsistent information, community support, student acceptance and revenue implications.

Respectfulness towards others is the key to a more civilized workplace The challenge for life at work is this: how to be a "business" person and a "human being" at the same time. How to be compete, yet cooperate; be hard-nosed, yet ethical; keep one's nose to the grindstone, yet still take time to "see" and acknowledge others; be professional, yet personal; to make a profit and yet not be greedy.

Time Management and To-Do Lists are less effective at coping with work overload I have to draw this article by Linda Stone in The Huffington Post to your notice, because it gives one of the best explanations I have come across on how to be become truly more productive in times when you simply have too much to do ("Is it Time to Retire the Never-Ending List?").

Most people try to cope with ever more demanding jobs and escalating targets by working longer hours. Sometimes it seems to be the only way, even if the impact on lives and relationships is almost wholly negative. But what if responding to workplace pressure in that way is dealing with the wrong issue - trying to manage and extend time, when what you need to be doing is managing your energy levels?

There's a Chinese proverb that goes something like this: "Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand." Leaders should know by now that people tend to resist change when it's forced on them. "Telling" is what initiates the resistance. It causes those being told to spend their energy mostly on NOT doing what you've told them. Yet that resistance is not so much about the change; it's all about being changed.

We need leaders who see themselves as learners. How can we help school leaders to reconnect with their inner leader? How can we take risks within the parameters of the school environment?

After four years of work, this Wisconsin district's effort in creating its own online assessment program is paying off for teachers, students and the bottom line.

Instead of using scare tactics and statistics that are misleading, we must paint a realistic picture and use statistics appropriately. Rather than pass legislation that puts constraints on schools, Congress needs to fund online safety education and public awareness campaigns that show the true picture. "You can't get there from here." it's not just the punch line of a driving direction joke. For us educators, whose destination is the realization of educational technology's potential, that punch line sometimes seems closer to the truth than we like.

I'm a big Ken Robinson fan and have pointed to him many times such as in this post on his TED talk from 2006 (and see Sir Ken's ideas on public speaking here). Even if you saw the TED talk, you will enjoy this 15-minute presentation (given sans slides, as is the Sir Ken Robinson style) that he delivered in April of this year to an international crowd of school superintendents at the Apple Education Leadership Summit in San Francisco.

Check out the CEO Forum's final report, the Year 4 Report: Key Building Blocks for Student Achievement in the 21st Century or take the K-12 interactive STaR assessment.

Technology alone has little effect on improving student achievement. However, it can be a powerful tool to support the nine instructional strategies identified in Classroom Instruction that Works. This article from Learning & Leading with Technology (February, 2004 31(5)) briefly explains how the following technology tools can be used to support the nine instructional strategies.

This book suggests ways in which the research-based strategies in Classroom Instruction That Works can be used with educational technologies, such as word processing and spreadsheet applications, multimedia, data collection tools, communication software, and the Internet.

Make an impact on student achievement by becoming intensively involved in curricular and instructional issues. To be effective, share leadership with assistant principals, instructional coaches, teacher leaders, and leadership teams. While other areas are important and equally urgent, teaching and learning must be high priorities if student achievement is to be improved.

Develop a basic knowledge of shared leadership and gain insight into how it can help your school become a learning community. This four-week course introduces - definitions of shared leadership, school culture, and professional learning community and describes what these look like when they're present in a school - tools participants use to measure individual and school characteristics related to shared leadership - research on shared leadership and leadership practices identified as having a statistically significant relationship to student achievement - six functions of a school leader who effectively shares leadership: inspire, model, organize, monitor, support, reflect

Learn through stories from real schools, videos from exemplary classrooms, and a variety of research-based tools, all with a special emphasis on the role of 21st century teaching and learning skills. Developed and made popular by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, these skills represent how and what students should learn within the context of a curriculum and how teachers should model them in their teaching. As you learn, you will develop relationships with other principals and administrators taking the course. An integral part of this experience will be reflecting, sharing, and communicating with this online learning community.

Delve into the best available information from research on technology integration and new compelling video clips of real classrooms where students are engaged in content areas using technology. Gain a better understanding of the stages of technology integration and how to support teacher growth. The course addresses recent policy as well as portions of the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A).

Educators may sometimes feel they are in a race against several clocks-the class period, the school day, the semester, the academic year, high school exit exams and so forth-as they prepare students for academic success. What can district leaders do to appropriately address issues of time and time management? How can they ensure that what is most important-student learning-is not at the mercy of things that are less urgent? As leaders weigh their options, research offers some important reminders.