The Metephysical Laws of Learning: Introduction

Talk of schools, educational philosophies, plans and policies proliferate. Learners move through school systems as if by Brownian motion. Teachers, their education, careers, and methods equally reflect some kind of stochastic process.

What can be proven to be useful for all learners over time? What are universals that anyone, learner or teacher, can employ to improve their fulfillment?

This could be just another airy-fairy rant, but I will try to make it as practical and empirically grounded as possible, it's just that in my teaching and learning experiences, I have found few tools that any person could employ universally to improve their learning. There are too many variables, and while dedicated professionals create more, adapting tools at their disposal, none of them will work for everyone.

One example of that is something I learned about just today came in a tweet by @oksan_ocakturk. She mentioned two online tools that have great potential for learners, MailVu and Vocaroo. She found a great presentation on the tools by Russell Stannard. MailVu is a service where people can create and send video messages by email. Mr. Stannard suggests that students can use this to send presentations to their teachers. Mr. Stannard suggests similar activities with Vocaroo, but without the video element.

Those are terrific services and have applications for a huge variety of learning. I would like to use these for my classes, but will probably opt for lower tech solutions, because...
 1.) nearly all of my students use cell phones extensively, but I'm not sure that they have access to computers for using these sites. The university has computers for their use, but they would have no privacy, and would not feel comfortable making English presentations on those machines.
2.) if they made presentations and sent them to me, there may be privacy issues, such as they may include their private email addresses. I do not want that kind of information.
3.) it would be nearly impossible to use school computers during English class time; classrooms do not have Internet connectivity, and it would be easier to set up a video camera in the corner of the room for students to use for making presentations.

 So what tools are available and useful for any learner or teacher anywhere? My conclusion is that familiarity with and employment of Hermetic Principles will empower people in any learning situation. I will outline the 7 Hermetic Principles here, and discuss each one in turn in posts that follow.

"The Principles of Truth are Seven; he who knows these,
    understandingly, possesses the Magic Key before whose
    touch all the Doors of the Temple fly open."--The Kybalion.

The 7 Hermetic Principles as described in The Kybalion are
1. The Principle of Mentalism.
    2. The Principle of Correspondence.
    3. The Principle of Vibration.
    4. The Principle of Polarity.
    5. The Principle of Rhythm.
    6. The Principle of Cause and Effect.
    7. The Principle of Gender.

The Kybalion was first published in 1908 by three anonymous writers, and is now in the public domain. The writers report that the content is based on ancient Hermeticism.