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"The program kicks off today with two curriculums, Business or Supply Chain Management for associate and bachelor's degrees with additional curriculums to follow at three non-profit universities: University of Florida which is ranked #17 in the nation for its business school by U.S. News and World Report, Brandman University and Bellevue University. The five-year long program will include what Carlson calls "having a personal coach for education" from the application process up through graduation."

"Blogger Tim Urban explains his process of extreme procrastination in which his brain wages war between instant gratification and the moment of pure panic just before a deadline."

"During her search for videos, Chellani discovered that many of them didn't cover foundational concepts. So she started creating her own using the digital content creation software Adobe Captivate. She also started evaluating the concepts she teaches and decided to move away from teaching "to the textbook." Without this built-in time every week, Chellani said she wouldn't be able to work on these projects. Through end-of-year conferences, Sheninger found out that other teaches had students blog in their English classes and create YouTube videos instead of traditional lab reports. "I don't know if that stuff would have happened if this time wasn't made available," Sheninger said."

While the participants in each conversation deserve the most credit for jumping into play as a pathway for transforming professional practice, the aforementioned facilitators helped scaffold dynamic settings for learning during our time together which felt both entirely awesome and all too short. In response to both on-site and online feedback, I wanted to share some notes on practice before too much time goes by.

"I also love using Pocket and Evernote. Pocket saves all the interesting articles and blog posts that I want to read later. I could not survive without it. Evernote helps me remember notes and acts as my on-the-go text editor (plus it saves all the good restaurants I have tried, too). I also use Evernote+my Moleskine as my day organizer. Every day I create a grid and categorize my to-do's as either quick or long, and either high or low priority. Then I take a picture with my Evernote, have the picture always up on my screen, and use reminders to nudge me at the end of the day to reflect on my productivity. "

The dire need for repairs still remains, despite a broad range of approaches designed to fix public education. The pendulum swings to and fro. This year, the highly politicized strategy is to increase the stringency of standardized tests (often without warning) and then to blame the teachers for the widespread failures of their students to meet those standards.

You cannot repair a system when its foundation has been destroyed. I think most students want to take control of their learning. The use of Web 2.0 tools can move this process alone and the teacher's role must change from a 'sage on state' to a social media coach.

"Google Docs is an online suite of digital tools that provides teachers with some powerful features to help students develop 21st century writing skills. Since Docs are collaborative and available 24/7, the tool is well-suited for facilitating digital writing workshops that combine peer editing with cooperative grouping and small group fine-tuned writing instruction."

"I had expected that people signing up for a course like this, a non-traditional course where we work mostly on our own or together with other students in the class, would be students who embrace that kind of learning, students who feel a sense of independence and self-determination as learners. What I've learned, though, is that this is not the case for at least some students in the class, who are very much expecting the teacher to function as the voice of absolute authority in the class."

Isn't that the nature of humans? We want freedom for creativity and original thinking, but ultimately it makes us uncomfortable when people actually do achieve it; ultimately it seems that humans instinctively cling to rules, tradition and order.

Good point Tammy. Still, the "grading" paradigm is a strong one. We should expect today's students to start being a little more autonomous in their learning process.

"The response is not only technological. The best communication, remote meeting, collaboration or social networking solutions won't fix bad habits but can enable new ones provided they're desired. No one will switch from a reporting culture to an open work one without effort. And in the same way businesses establish social networking policies - and should even start with email policies - they should contemplate establishing meeting policies."

Conversations and perspectives that shed light on the value of the Internet of Everything.

"From 1. Documenting (video, audio, text, images, embedded content,manage online work, curated content) to 2. Reflecting (meta-cognitive, connected, goal oriented, as an assessment) to 3. Sharing (published, transparent, making learning/ thinking visible,  to teach others and contribute to a network) on to 4. Connecting (for authentic feedback, collaboration purposes, finding mentors and to gain perspective)"