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Successful initial implementation and ongoing maintenance of process improvements requires overcoming the resistance to change. Green Belts are change agents who need to recognize, understand and interpret resistance to change and develop skills to manage it effectively. Managing change resistance is often covered in training, yet a primary learning issue facing most organizations is the lack of engagement and motivation in lecture-based training. By using simulations, exercises or games, practitioners can enliven their learning environments and improve knowledge retention, skills and applications. This will keep the audience members interacting with each other and with the content.

The game really can "change" your classroom by actively involving students in exploring the effects of innovation in the past and on the future.

Leonardo da Vinci was a change agent. You probably know it already, it's worth repeating. At the time of birth, you are endowed with the same potential he had. Today, we need more than genius to make things happen though.

Critical Mass: How Digital Technology Will Define the Way You Live Digital communities are where you live-that's "you" as in Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2006, which recognizes and celebrates "the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter." This Digital Communities Special Report discusses how the 120 million Americans who are active online users and creators of content and services are changing the world by redefining it around their preferences and predilections, and by the technologies they use and the way they use them. Also see http://www.accela.com/products/whitepapers.asp

Just two decades ago, many schools had only a few computers and taught lessons about typing. But Monday marked a drastic change for Arizona schools as one of the first K-5 technology academies opened its doors to students. Scales Technology Academy in Tempe boasts a 1-1 ratio of students to laptop computers. The school''s principal, David Diokno, said it is the first Arizona elementary school to do so. The Arizona Department of Education does not track such information.

For decades, the way the TV networks and advertisers worked together was simple. A lot of people watched TV, the Nielsen company estimated just how many, and the advertisers paid for airtime based on the Nielsen ratings. Now, the TV industry is changing and Nielsen is trying to keep up.">@import "/templates/css/mainstyles.css";@import "/templates/css/bucket_alt.css";@import "/templates/css/stories.css";@import "/templates/css/print_stories.css"; metatext/html; charset=iso-8859-1

The term professional learning community has become quite commonplace in education circles. The term describes a collegial group who are united in their commitment to an outcome. In the case of education, the commitment would be to student learning. The community engages in a variety of activities including sharing a vision, working and learning collaboratively, visiting and observing other classrooms, and participating in shared decision making. The benefits of professional learning community to educators and students include reduced isolation of teachers, better informed and committed teachers, and academic gains for students. Shirley Hord of the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory says, that as an organizational arrangement, the professional learning community is seen as a powerful staff-development approach and a potent strategy for school change and improvement.

Out to change the world and doing it. Meh.

Every Monday, All Things Considered will air its new series called All Tech Considered to explore the sometimes daunting - always changing - world of technology. Are you baffled by your cell phone? Wondering what your kids mean when they say they're tweeting on Twitter? Whatever it may be, All Tech Considered is here to explore it with you."

Will the transhuman technologies that our accelerating future promises enable us to increase our empathy to others? Or will their use decrease our ability to understand 'the other' that exists outside our own selves, families, communities and cultures? As the world grows smaller and more connected, humans will grow ever more divergent because of their possession - or not - of a multitude of transhuman technologies, and so the role of empathy grows larger and more important than ever. In theory, sensory/media input stimulates mirror neurons, which enable empathy.Practically, empathy is created through storytelling, which is not only the most successful remote means of creating social empathy, but has actually been the engine of social/cultural liberalization and change. I will demonstrate both the positive and negative affects on empathy through the increasing reliance we have on transhuman media technologies and how I believe storytelling is the key to empathy creation.