It won’t surprise anyone to hear that I am a big believer in tapping the power of broadband and gaming to improve education.  I believe the next great breakthroughs in the K-12 classroom will be in broadband-enabled online learning.  That’s a development that can’t come too soon.

If I sound impatient,  it is not just that other countries are ahead of us in online education, though many are — particularly in Asia.  Here are examples taken from a 2010 study by the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute:

• Singapore: In Singapore today all high schools use online learning and all teachers are trained to teach online.   Singapore is also experimenting with using the online game Second Life as a teaching tool.

• China:  Focusing on areas without sufficient schools and teachers, China is using online learning to reach 100 million students.  Eight years ago, the nation’s entire K-12 curriculum was put online.  One of the country’s education leaders, Chinese University of Hong Kong president Lawrence Lau, has reported that China considers broadband critical to overcoming poverty.  Among other innovations, China is using a broadband agreement with the United Kingdom to give Chinese K-12 students access to English educational opportunities.

• India: India is working to provide universal access to online K-12 learning by 2020.  From developing a $10 laptop for students to digitizing its K-12 curriculum, it has given online learning high priority.  It is even selecting the best teachers in math and science and will make them available to global classes, seeing online learning as an export opportunity, too.

To my mind, these countries are exactly right in their online emphasis.  Here in the United States, a 2009 report from SRI International for the U.S. Department of Education found that, “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

As the study’s lead author told The New York Times, “Online learning today is not just better than nothing; it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction.” According to the Times, one big reason is that online learning provides “‘learning by doing,’ which many students find more engaging and useful.”

In other words, the same lessons we’ve learned in the video game world can be applied to education:  Make an experience hands on, engaging and fun, and students will come, stay and learn.

I recently read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs.  Steve was, of course, among the most brilliant and creative business leaders in American history.  Isaacson opens a window on why and how.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Walter distills from the book 14 lessons that he calls “the keys to [Steve’s] success.”  They range from “focus” and “simplicity” to “stay hungry, stay foolish.”  This last one means, as Jobs wrote for an Apple ad: “[T]he people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

But the Jobs lesson that spoke with particular strength to me was, “Combine the Humanities with the Sciences.“  It runs all through the book’s sections on Pixar, iTunes and the iPod, and really through all of Steve’ life.

As Steve told Walter, “Silicon Valley folks don’t really respect Hollywood creative types, and the Hollywood folks think tech folks are people you hire and never have to meet…. Pixar was one place where both cultures were respected.”

I didn’t realize it before reading the biography, but at first Jobs thought Pixar’s business would be selling rendering machines and accompanying software.  Animation was a sideline he kept alive, primarily out of a passion for the brilliant work that chief animator John Lasseter and his team were turning out.  As Isaacson tells the story, at the end of the concept presentation for the first Apple short, the five-minute-long Tin Toy, Jobs turned to Lasseter and said, “All I ask of you John, is to make it great.”  Tin Toy won the 1988 Oscar for best short animation.

So even as slow sales of hardware and software prompted cuts in staff and budgets everywhere else, Steve continued to fund expensive development projects in animation.  The result, as Isaacson concludes, was that “combining great art and digital technology would transform animated films more than anything had since 1937, when Walt Disney had given life to Snow White.”

To me, there is a great lesson in there about leading businesses – and about life: Stay focused?  Yes.  Simplify? Yes.  But most of all, whether or not your goal is changing the world, always, always follow your passion.