· It Project Management – Second Edition by Joseph Phillips
Renowned IT project management expert, Joseph Phillips, again delivers an authoritative, easy-to-understand guide that delves into all CompTIA IT Project+ certification objectives. The "Inside the Exam" sections focus on the necessary topics to pass the new CompTIA exam. Each chapter features an end-of-chapter review, and the CD-ROM includes an IT Project+ practice test, plus templates and worksheets to use when managing a project. The included real-world examples that provide on-the-job insight from practicing project management professionals, and tie discussed theory to practice, make this comprehensive reference a must-have for IT staff.
· Designing Effective eLearning: A Step-by-Step Guide (Effective eLearning Design) (Volume 1) by Benjamin Pitman, Ph.D
Your success as a trainer is measured by the success of the people who take your courses. You can expend a great deal of effort developing content-focused or "wow" focused courses and get great reviews but still fail to change the way learners behave. To be successful, you need to focus on instructional design that results in learner transformation — new or improved skills or better decisions.
This book guides you step-by-step in applying the vast body of research and experience to design high-impact e-learning courses. To do a complete job you should also consider the companion book, superb eLearning Using Low-cost Scenarios: A Step-by-Step Guide to eLearning by Doing. This book contains over 400 practical tips, guidelines, and best practices on the instructional design and the technical design parts of creating professional-looking effective e-learning courses developed in Lectora®, Articulate®, Captivate®, Toolbook®, and many other authoring applications.
The Instructional Design covers how to define your course requirements and performance objectives, six content organization strategies, how to compensate for the lack of a classroom environment, extensive details on how to write your content pages, guidelines for audio, video, and animation, secrets of writing effective practice exercises, and how to motivate the learner.
The Technical Design includes more than 80 tips on format, layout, and navigation for a user-friendly attractive look and feel, 30+ things you must consider when designing activities and practice exercises, and technical considerations for audio and video media. It is the only book that has an entire chapter devoted to how to design a user-friendly web interface.
· Conducting Online Surveys 2nd Edition by Valarie M. Sue, Lois A. Ritter
Conducting Online Surveys is a complete guide to conducting survey research using digital modalities. Many topics discussed, such as developing online and mobile questionnaires, are unique to digital surveys, whereas others, such as creating reliable survey questions, are common to all survey environments. The expansion of low-cost software options has opened up this area to a broad range of researchers, and the need for a comprehensive text for developing, implementing, and reporting digital surveys is greater than ever. This Second Edition reflects the significant developments in technology and the methodological literature since the publication of the First Edition. It captures in one single volume everything you need to know about conducting digital surveys from start to finish.
· Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge by Bruffee Kenneth A
Knowledge has traditionally been understood as cognitive - we gain it by examining the world and taking in the facts. Kenneth Bruffee offers a different model, one that accounts for new ways of thinking about how we learn and do research. He proposes that knowledge is "constructed through negotiation with others" in communities of knowledgeable peers, arguing that this new understanding of learning as an interdependent, collaborative enterprise is a central issue for college and university education today. Collaborative Learning is a book about fundamental change. Bruffee's premise - that learning occurs among persons, not between persons and things - overturns traditional notions about the authority of knowledge, the authority of teachers, and the very nature and authority of colleges and universities. Bruffee begins by discussing the place of collaborative learning in higher education, explaining what it is, how it works, and why. He then examines the implications of the "Kuhnian" understanding of knowledge on which collaborative learning is based, explaining how "nonfoundational social constructionist thought" changes our understanding of education in general. Bruffee argues that changing college and university education depends first on changing how teachers think about knowledge, teaching, and learning. He describes the practical value of the activities encouraged by a collaborative approach students working in consensus groups and research teams, tutoring peers, and helping each other with editing and revision. He concludes that this organized practice in working together on intellectual tasks is the best possible preparation for the real world, as students look beyond the authority of teachers, practice the craft of interdependence and construct knowledge in the very way that academic disciplines and the professions do.
· By Barbara Ehrenreich - Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (First Edition)
Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them, inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aid, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupation require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough: you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.
Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity – a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives is working poor.
· Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education: Revised and Expanded from Case Study Research in Education by Sharan B. Merriam
An invaluable resource--one that will open up the conceptual world of qualitative research and provide the step-by-step direction needed to translate those concepts into practice.
-- M. Carolyn Clark, Department of Educational Human Resource Development, College of Education, Texas A&M University
Since Merriam's definitive Case Study Research in Education first appeared in 1988, significant advances have occurred in the field of qualitative research. To meet the demand for a book that reflects these important changes, Merriam has completely revised and updated her classic work.
Timely, authoritative, and approachable, Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education is a practical resource that offers the information and guidance needed to manage all phases of the qualitative and case study research process.
· Cases in Online Interview Research by Janet Salmons
In an era of constrained research budgets, online interviewing opens up immense possibilities: a researcher can literally conduct a global study without ever leaving home. But more than a decade after these technologies started to become available, there are still few studies on how to utilize online interviews in research. This book provides 10 cases of research conducted using online interviews, with data collected through text-based, videoconferencing, multichannel meetings, and immersive 3-D environments. Each case is followed by two commentaries: one from another expert contributor, the second from Janet Salmons, as editor.
· How we think by John Dewey
One of America's foremost philosophers, John Dewey (1859-1952) fought for civil and academic freedom, founded the Progressive School movement, and steadfastly promoted a scientific approach to intellectual development.
In How We Think, Dewey shares his views on the educator's role in training students to think well. Basing his assertions on the belief that knowledge is strictly relative to human interaction with the world, he considers the need for thought training, its use of natural resources, and its place in school conditions; inductive and deductive reasoning, interpreting facts, and concrete and abstract thinking; the functions of activity, language, and observation in thought training; and many other subjects.
John Dewey's influence on American education and philosophy is incalculable. This volume, as fresh and inspirational today as it was upon its initial publication a century ago, is essential for anyone active in the field of teaching or about to embark on a career in education.
· The Schools our CHILDREN DESERVE by Alfie Kohn
Are our schools in trouble because they have lowered their standards and strayed too far from the basics? Just the opposite: if American students are getting less than they deserve, it's due to simplistic demands to "raise the bar" and an aggressive nostalgia for traditional teaching.
Alfie Kohn, the author of critically acclaimed works on such subjects as competition and rewards, now turns the conventional wisdom about education on its head. In this landmark book, he shows how the "back-to-basics" philosophy of teaching treats children as passive receptacles into which forgettable facts are poured. Likewise, shrill calls for Tougher Standards are responsible for squeezing the intellectual life out of classrooms. Such political slogans reflect a lack of understanding about how and why kids learn, and they force teachers to spend time preparing students for standardized tests instead of helping them to become critical, creative thinkers.
Kohn offers an ambitious yet practical vision of what our children's classrooms could be like. Drawing on a remarkable body of research, he helps parents and other ex-students understand the need to move beyond a "bunch o' facts" model of teaching. Drawing on stories from real classrooms, he shows how this can be done. Along the way, Kohn offers surprising truths about the Whole Language versus phonics controversy, why a straight-A report card may not be good news, and how we can best gauge the progress of schools and students.
The Schools Our Children Deserve offers a fresh perspective on today's headlines about education – and on what our children will be asked to do in class tomorrow morning. It offers a persuasive invitation to rethink our most basic assumptions about schooling.
· Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Analytical Reading and Reasoning by Larry Wright
Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Analytical Reading and Reasoning, Second Edition, provides a nontechnical vocabulary and analytic apparatus that guide students in identifying and articulating the central patterns found in reasoning and in expository writing more generally. Understanding these patterns of reasoning helps students to better analyze, evaluate, and construct arguments and to more easily comprehend the full range of everyday arguments found in ordinary journalism.
Critical Thinking, Second Edition, distinguishes itself from other texts in the field by emphasizing analytical reading as an essential skill. It also provides detailed coverage of argument analysis, diagnostic arguments, diagnostic patterns, and fallacies.
Opening with two chapters on analytical reading that help students recognize what makes reasoning explicitly different from other expository activities, the text then presents an interrogative model of argument to guide them in the analysis and evaluation of reasoning. This model allows a detailed articulation of "inference to the best explanation" and gives students a view of the pervasiveness of this form of reasoning. The author demonstrates how many common argument types--from correlations to sampling--can be analyzed using this articulated form. He then extends the model to deal with several predictive and normative arguments and to display the value of the fallacy vocabulary.
Ideal for introductory courses in critical thinking, critical reasoning, informal logic, and inductive reasoning, Critical Thinking, Second Edition, features hundreds of exercises throughout and includes worked-out solutions and additional exercises (without solutions) at the end of each chapter. An Instructor's Manual--offering solutions to the text's unanswered exercises and featuring other pedagogical aids--is available on the book's Companion Website at www.oup.com/us/wright.
· Simple and Usable by Giles Colborne
In a complex world, products that are easy to use win favor with consumers. This is the first book on the topic of simplicity aimed specifically at interaction designers. It shows how to drill down and simplify user experiences when designing digital tools and applications. It begins by explaining why simplicity is attractive, explores the laws of simplicity, and presents proven strategies for achieving simplicity. Remove, hide, organize and displace become guidelines for designers, who learn simplicity by seeing before and after examples and case studies where the results speak for themselves.
· Teaching Online A Practical Guide (Second Edition) by Susan Ko and Steve Rossen
Suitable for courses in online teaching, web-based instruction, teaching with the Internet, or the online classroom, this book answers the most common questions and concerns of instructors who want create electronic educational environments.
Topics covered include choosing software and technology tools, building an online classroom, creating an online syllabus, course conversion, online classroom management, integrating online and face-to-face activities, and student support issues. The text is supported by a web site that provides new strategies, tips, and information on emergent technologies.
Pedagogy includes "Important" points that highlight key topics; "Definition" boxes that feature key terms with brief definitions; and "Sidebars," which focus student attention on important points.
· Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments / Edition 1 by Susan Land, David H. Jonassen
Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments describes the most contemporary psychological and pedagogical theories that are foundations for the conception and design of open-ended learning environments and new applications of educational technologies.
In the past decade, the cognitive revolution of the 60s and 70s has been replaced or restructured by constructivism and its associated theories, including situated, sociocultural, ecological, everyday, and distributed conceptions of cognition. These theories represent a paradigm shift for educators and instructional designers, to a view of learning as necessarily more social, conversational, and constructive than traditional transmissive views of learning. Never in the history of education have so many different theories said the same things about the nature of learning and the means for supporting it. At the same time, although there is a remarkable amount of consonance among these theories, each also provides a distinct perspective on how learning and sense making occur.
This book provides students, faculty, and instructional designers with a clear, concise introduction to these theories and their implications for the design of new learning environments for schools, universities, and corporations. It is well-suited as a required or supplementary text for courses in instructional design and theory, educational psychology, learning, theory, curriculum theory and design, and related areas.
· Program Evaluation Alternative Approaches and Practical Guidelines by Jody L. Fitzpatrick, James R. Sanders, and Blaine R. Worthen
The most comprehensive text on program evaluation, providing an overview of a wide variety of approaches to evaluation and extensive practical guidelines for how to carry out evaluation studies successfully. This text helps both students and professionals who are new to evaluation to understand how the field has evolved, what different approaches an evaluator can take in conducting evaluations, and how to plan and conduct an evaluation. The text makes extensive use of checklists, examples, and a comprehensive case study. Finally, throughout the book, students are introduced to current trends and controversial issues in evaluation and ways to conduct evaluations in an ethical and professional manner.
· E-Learning: Strategies for Delivering Knowledge in the Digital Age / Edition 1 by Marc Rosenberg
Internet and intranet technologies offer tremendous opportunities to bring learning into the mainstream of business. E-Learning outlines how to develop an organization-wide learning strategy based on cutting-edge technologies and explains the dramatic strategic, organizational, and technology issues involved.
Written for professionals responsible for leading the revolution in workplace learning, E-Learning takes a broad, strategic perspective on corporate learning. This wake-up call for executives everywhere discusses:
• Requirements for building a viable e-learning strategy
• How online learning will change the nature of training organizations
• Knowledge management and other new forms of e-learning
Marc J. Rosenberg, Ph.D. (Hillsborough, NJ) is an independent consultant specializing in knowledge management, e-learning strategy and the reinvention of training. Prior to this, he was a senior direction and knowledge management field leader for consulting firm Diamond Cluster International.
· Publication Manuel of the American Psychological Association by American Psychological Association
The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is the style manual of choice for writers, editors, students, and educators in the social and behavioral sciences. It provides invaluable guidance on all aspects of the writing process, from the ethics of authorship to the word choice that best reduces bias in language. Well-known for its authoritative and easy-to-use reference and citation system, the Publication Manual also offers guidance on choosing the headings, tables, figures, and tone that will result in strong, simple, and elegant scientific communication. The sixth edition offers new and expanded instruction on publication ethics, statistics, journal article reporting standards, electronic reference formats, and the construction of tables and figures. The sixth edition has been revised and updated to include new ethics guidance on such topics as determining authorship and terms of collaboration, duplicate publication, plagiarism and self-plagiarism, disguising of participants, validity of instrumentation, and making data available to others for verification; new journal article reporting standards to help readers report empirical research with clarity and precision; simplified APA heading style to make it more conducive to electronic publication; updated guidelines for reducing bias in language to reflect current practices and preferences, including a new section on presenting historical language that is inappropriate by present standards; new guidelines for reporting inferential statistics and a significantly revised table of statistical abbreviations new instruction on using supplemental files containing lengthy data sets and other media; significantly expanded content on the electronic presentation of data to help readers understand the purpose of each kind of display and choose the best match for communicating the results of the investigation, with new examples for a variety of data displays.
· Instructional Patterns Strategies for Maximizing Student Learning by Larry C. Holt and Marcella Kysilka
Instructional Patterns: Strategies for Maximizing Student Learning uniquely examines instruction from the learners' point of view. In this text, authors Larry C. Holt and Marcella Kysilka comprehensively examine various instructional patterns including Teacher Centered, Teacher Student Interactive, Student Centered, and Thinking and Organizing the Content, to help readers plan research based instructional strategies that make the most of a student's learning experience. The book also looks at historical, psychological, and social factors that affect instructional decision making, as well as practical issues of instruction such as lesson planning, classroom management and assessment, and accountability.
· The Program Evaluation Standards: How to Assess Evaluations of Educational Programs / Edition 1 by SAGE Publications
The Second Edition of this volume is the result of an extensive review process by the Joint Committee of the original Standards for Evaluations of Educational Programs, Projects, and Materials published in 1981. The 30 standards are divided into four groups corresponding to the attributes of fair programmed evaluation - utility; feasibility; propriety; and accuracy. In this new edition, original standards have been combined and others added, with new case illustrations featuring applications of the standards to reform efforts in a diverse range of settings including schools, universities, law, medicine, nursing, business and social service agencies. Taken as a set, the Standards provide a working philosophy for evaluators.
· How the Brain Learns by David A. Sousa
This updated edition of the powerful bestseller examines new research on brain functioning and translates this information into effective classroom strategies and activities.
· Under-Resourced Learners: 8 Strategies to Boost Student Achievement by Ruby K. Payne Ph.D
Millions of school-age children are "under-resourced" and at risk of failure in school. This book identifies resources all students need and delivers proven, practical strategies for building up these resources for every student in the school. Determine best strategies and interventions--and develop strategies for building relationships and increasing family support systems. Monitor progress and adjust strategies for student success.
· Rapid Evaluation: Tools, Worksheets, and Job AIDS to Help You Develop an Evaluation Strategy, Use the Right Evaluation Approach, Understand and Analyze Evaluation Data (ASTD Learning and Performance Workbook) by Susan Barksdale, Teri Lund, Teri Lund
Learn how to approach evaluation strategically and to link results to your organization's goals, strategies, and performance indicators. Included are dozens of evaluation tools, checklists, and examples help you build a comprehensive evaluation strategy, or answer a specific evaluation question.
· Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning: A Guide to Theory and Practice / Edition 3 by Patricia Cranton
The third edition of Patricia Cranton's Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning brings a wealth of new insight from the tremendous growth in the field during the decade since the previous edition. As in the previous editions, the book helps adult educators understand what transformative learning is, distinguish it from other forms of learning, and foster it in their practice. The first part of the book is dedicated to clarifying transformative learning theory and relating it to other theoretical frameworks. The author examines transformative learning from the learner's perspective, and discusses individual differences in how learners go through the process. In the second half of the book, the focus is squarely on strategies for promoting transformative learning in a wide variety of adult and higher education contexts. Practitioners will be able to take ideas from the text and apply them directly in their teaching.
· Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead the People Who Deliver Technology / Edition 1 by Paul Glen, David H. Maister, Warren G. Bennis, David H. Maister
Winner of the 2003 Financial Times Germany/get Abstract Business & Finance Book Award
Leading Geeks challenges the conventional wisdom that leadership methods are universal and gives executives and managers the understanding they need to manage and lead the technologists on whom they have become so dependent. This much-needed book? written in nontechnical language by Paul Glen, a highly-acclaimed management consultant? gives clear directions on how to effectively lead these brilliant yet notoriously resistant-to-being-managed knowledge workers. Glen not only provides proven management strategies but also background on why traditional approaches often don't work with geeks. Leading Geeks describes the beliefs and behavior of geeks, their group dynamics, and the unique nature of technical work. It also offers a unique twelve-part model that explains how knowledge workers deliver value to an organization.
· First, Break All The Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham, Curt Coffman, James K. Harter
Gallup presents the remarkable findings of its revolutionary study of more than 80,000 managers in First, Break All the Rules, revealing what the world's greatest managers do differently. With vital performance and career lessons and ideas for how to apply them, it is a must-read for managers at every level.
Included with this re-release of First, Break All the Rules: updated meta-analytic research and access to the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, which reveals people's top themes of talent, and to Gallup's Q12 employee engagement survey, the most effective measure of employee engagement and its impact on business outcomes.
What separates the greatest managers from all the rest?
They actually have vastly different styles and backgrounds. Yet despite their differences, great managers share one common trait: They don't hesitate to break virtually every rule held sacred by conventional wisdom. They don't believe that, with enough training, a person can achieve anything he sets his mind to. They don't try to help people overcome their weaknesses. And, yes, they even play favorites.
In this longtime management bestseller, Gallup presents the remarkable findings of its massive in-depth study of great managers. Some were in leadership positions. Others were front-line supervisors. Some were in Fortune 500 companies; others were key players in small, entrepreneurial firms. Whatever their circumstances, the managers who ultimately became the focus of Gallup's research were those who excelled at turning each individual employee's talent into high performance.
Gallup has found that the front-line manager is the key to attracting and retaining talented employees. This book explains how the best managers select an employee for talent rather than for skills or experience, set expectations, build on each person's unique strengths rather than trying to fix his or her weaknesses, and get the best performance out of their teams.
And perhaps most important, Gallup's research produced the 12 simple statements that distinguish the strongest departments of a company from all the rest. First, Break All the Rules is the first book to present this essential measuring stick and to prove the link between employee opinions and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction and the rate of turnover.
First, Break All the Rules presents vital performance and career lessons for managers at every level — and best of all, shows you how to apply them to your own situation.
· Multimedia for Learning: Methods and Development / Edition 3 by Stephen M. Alessi, Stanley R. Trollip
This book shows how to use computers in educational settings by combining learning theory and instructional strategies to help the reader design software for learning and instruction. The book has been extensively revised to include new approaches to multimedia instruction as well as updating established methods such as tutorials, drills, simulations, games, and computer-based tests. Constructivist and instructivist approaches are analyzed and presented. The book is not equipment or software specific. For people interested in Educational Multimedia
· Working Virtually: Managing People for Successful Virtual Teams and Organizations / Edition 1 by Trina Hoefling
Virtual working is a fact of life as companies manage teams of individuals dispersed on sites across the country or around the globe; take increasing advantage of improving technology and software to telecommute and teleconference; and begin to think about the human element in disaster recovery.
The key to successful dispersed working is not technological expertise, but a clear understanding of what it takes to get the enterprise ready for virtual work, and of the skills for bonding individuals into cohesive, high-performance teams across distances and differences.
This book provides that guidance - through work charts, vivid "composite" examples, definitions and actual cases - and shows how the technological tools support and expand the options for collaboration.
It answers such critical questions as "What makes working virtually work?", "How do we start?", "How do you develop new leaders in a virtual environment?", "What skills do virtual managers and team members need?", "How do you determine how ready they are?", "Which technologies are most appropriate for your purposes?", "What's the impact on existing systems and structures?"
This book is an indispensable practical guide and reference for virtual team leaders, HR managers, CEO's and trainers. It will also be suitable for professional certification and business courses in organizational development.
· Building Great Flash MX Games by Matthew David
* Designed for both professionals and hobbyists, this is the most complete book on creating sophisticated games with Macromedia Flash MX
• Shows readers how to harness the full potential of Flash MX and Flash ActionScript
• Provides hands-on advice for creating commercial games, as well as games to boost a Web site's "stickiness," perk up presentations, or enhance educational materials
• Explains the tools, scripts, and other building blocks of Flash games tools and then shows how to put them together
• Companion Web site includes all source code and game artwork from the book as well as links to free game development tools and product trials
· Multimedia: Making It Work, Sixth Edition / Edition 6 by Tay Vaughan, Chris Johnson, Chris (Ed.) Johnson
This book teaches the fundamental concepts and skills multimedia professionals use every day. Starting with the important building blocks -- text, graphics, audio, video, and animation -- you will learn how to plan and manage multimedia projects, from dynamic CD-ROMs and DVDs to professional-looking Web sites.
· Web Design Studio Secrets by Deke McClelland, Katrin Eismann, Terri Stone, Steve Broback
Do you keep an archive of killer Web sites? You're not alone. Fifteen leading Web designers reveal the secrets behind their favorite sites in the updated edition of Web Design Studio Secrets. Featuring interviews with the experts, undocumented tips and techniques, and full-color illustrations in an oversized format, this edition also presents case studies packed with advice.
Discover what's in a winning site — Dynamic HTML, Flash animation, and JavaScript rollovers are among the contenders. The CD-ROM contains demo software from key industry players, artwork from the book, and QuickTime interviews with featured artists. With Web Design Studio Secrets, 2nd Ed., you'll find out what the competition's been up to and how to use it to your advantage
· Photoshop Elements Drop Dead Photography Techniques by Steve Luck
A brand-new companion to the bestselling Digital Photographer's Guide to Photoshop Elements provides photographers with the practical, technical information they need to take full advantage of the most popular image-processing software on the market.
Photoshop Elements is a powerful image-processing package that enables users to produce sophisticated enhancements to their digital image files and photographs. With this comprehensive, practical, and illustrated handbook, newcomers to the technology can quickly learn the most effective, efficient ways to avail themselves of all its creative possibilities. Page by page, the guide bursts with authoritative tips and techniques for performing specific edits and adjustments to original digital photos. All the fundamental enhancements receive extensive explanation, including exposure correction, contrast adjustment, tonal alteration, and color balance modification. Go further, and use the software to mimic traditional photographic processes such as hand-tinting, create lighting effects, or build complex multilayered montages. The many easy-to-follow explanations and well-chosen examples make every step of the process wonderfully clear.
· The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Going Broke by Elizabeth Warren, Amelia Warren Tyagi, Amelia Warren Tyagi
In this revolutionary exposé, Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren and financial consultant Amelia Tyagi show that today's middle-class parents are increasingly trapped by financial meltdowns. Astonishingly, sending mothers to work has made families more vulnerable to financial disaster than ever before. Today's two-income family earns 75% more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but has 25% less discretionary income to cover living costs. This is "the rare financial book that sidesteps accusations of individual wastefulness to focus on institutional changes," raved the Boston Globe. Warren and Tyagi reveal how the ferocious bidding war for housing and education has silently engulfed America's suburbs, driving up the cost of keeping families in the middle class. The authors show why the usual remedies-child-support enforcement, subsidized daycare, and higher salaries for women-won't solve the problem. But as the Wall Street Journal observed, "The book is brimming with proposed solutions to the nail-biting anxiety that the middle class finds itself in: subsidized day care, school vouchers, new bank regulation, among other measures." From Senator Edward M. Kennedy to Dr. Phil to Bill Moyers, The Two-Income Trap has created a sensation among economists, politicians, and families-all those who care about America's middle-class crisis.
· Coaching: Evoking Excellence In Others by James Flaherty, Flaherty
Coaching is based on the premise we must understand people before we can coach them. Flaherty asks fundamental questions rather than supply "easy to apply" tips and surface bandaids. "Coaching is not telling people what to do; it's giving them a chance to examine what they are doing in the light of their intentions." (from the Preface) "A coach is someone who builds a respectful relationship with a client and then researches the situations the client finds himself in, with particular emphasis on the client's interpretation of the events." (from Chapter 1) Then, in partnership with the client, the coach can work to altering actions to bring about expected outcomes. This book provides the language and operative principles and assessment models and sample coaching conversations necessary to do that.
The book is grounded in many different paths of wisdom including time-tested philosophies, sociological premises and psychological discussions. Chapter bibliographies encourage further interdisciplinary reading.
· This book is a coaching tool enabling the reader to become a business coach who can self-correct and self-generate your own innovations
· It addresses the question: How do I contribute to someone's competence in a respectful, dignified, effective way?
· A Framework for Understanding Poverty: A Cognitive Approach by Ruby Payne
When viewed through an economic lens, poverty can be defined as an absence of resources. Since 1995, Framework's basic premise is that the middle-class understandings of those who work with children and adults in poverty are often ill-suited for connecting with and helping people build up resources and rise out of poverty. Now, 18 years and 1.5 million copies later, Framework: A Cognitive Approach has been revised, updated and expanded. The 5th edition features an enhanced chapter on instruction and achievement; greater emphasis on the thinking, community, and learning patterns involved in breaking out of poverty; plentiful citations, new case studies, and data: more details findings about interventions, resources, and causes of poverty, and a review of the outlook for people in poverty—and those who work with them.
· Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family? by Ethan Watters
In his early thirties, Ethan Watters began to realize that none of his friends were following the paths of their parents. Instead of settling down in couples and starting families, they lived and vacationed in groups, worked together at businesses they'd started, and met every week for dinner. As he started to document this phenomenon, he encountered countless other "tribes," in cities all over the U.S. Watters explores why tribe members have embraced this structure and what kind of affection and stability they find there, and contends that the conventional wisdom painting Generation X as isolated, selfish slackers may hide an unexpected, much warmer picture.
· The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach by Howard Gardner
Merging cognitive science with educational agenda, Gardner makes an eloquent case for restructuring our schools by showing just how ill-suited our minds and natural patterns of learning are to the prevailing modes of education. This reissue includes a new introduction by the author.
· When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor by William Julius Wilson
Wilson, one of our foremost authorities on race and poverty, challenges decades of liberal and conservative pieties to look squarely at the devastating effects that joblessness has had on our urban ghettos. Marshaling a vast array of data and the personal stories of hundreds of men and women, Wilson persuasively argues that problems endemic to America's inner cities—from fatherless households to drugs and violent crime—stem directly from the disappearance of blue-collar jobs in the wake of a globalized economy. Wilson's achievement is to portray this crisis as one that affects all Americans, and to propose solutions whose benefits would be felt across our society. At a time when welfare is ending and our country's racial dialectic is more strained than ever, When Work Disappears is a sane, courageous, and desperately important work.
"Wilson is the keenest liberal analyst of the most perplexing of all American problems...[This book is] more ambitious and more accessible than anything he has done before."
—The New Yorker
· Cases in Online Interview Research / Edition 1 by Janet Salmons
In an era of constrained research budgets, online interviewing opens up immense possibilities: a researcher can literally conduct a global study without ever leaving home. But more than a decade after these technologies started to become available, there are still few studies on how to utilize online interviews in research. This book provides 10 cases of research conducted using online interviews, with data collected through text-based, videoconferencing, multichannel meetings, and immersive 3-D environments. Each case is followed by two commentaries: one from another expert contributor, the second from Janet Salmons, as editor
· The Pact by Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt, Lisa Frazier Page
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A remarkable story about the power of friendship.
Chosen by Essence to be among the forty most influential African Americans, the three doctors grew up in the streets of Newark, facing city life's temptations, pitfalls, even jail. But one day these three young men made a pact. They promised each other they would all become doctors, and stick it out together through the long, difficult journey to attaining that dream. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt are not only friends to this day—they are all doctors.
This is a story about joining forces and beating the odds. A story about changing your life, and the lives of those you love most... together.
· Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators by Clay Shirky
The author of the breakout hit Here Comes Everybody reveals how new technology is changing us for the better.
In his bestselling Here Comes Everybody, Internet guru Clay Shirky provided readers with a much-needed primer for the digital age. Now, with Cognitive Surplus, he reveals how new digital technology is unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world. For the first time, people are embracing new media that allow them to pool their efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind-expanding reference tools like Wikipedia to life-saving Web sites like Ushahidi.com, which allows Kenyans to report acts of violence in real time. Cognitive Surplus explores what's possible when people unite to use their intellect, energy, and time for the greater good.
· Designing Effective Instruction / Edition 7 by Gary R. Morrison, Steven M. Ross, Howard K. Kalman, Jerrold E. Kemp
This book includes many new, enhanced features and content. Overall, the text integrates two success stories of practicing instructional designers with a focus on the process of instructional design. The text includes stories of a relatively new designer and another with eight to ten years of experience, weaving their scenarios into the chapter narrative. Throughout the book, there are updated citations, content, and information, as well as more discussions on learning styles, examples of cognitive procedure, and explanations on sequencing from cognitive load theory.
· Adult Children of Abusive Parents by Steven Farmer
A history of a childhood abuse is not a life sentence. Here is hope, healing, and a chance to recover the self-lost in childhood. Drawing on his extensive work with Adult Children, and on his own experience as a survivor of emotional neglect, therapist Steven Farmer demonstrates that through exercises and journal work, his program can help lead you through grieving your lost childhood, to become your own parent, and integrate the healing aspects of spiritual, physical, and emotional recovery into your adult life.
· Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin, Oliver Sacks (Foreword by)
Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is a gifted animal scientist who has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the United States. She also lectures widely on autism—because Temple Grandin is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us.
In this unprecedented book, Grandin delivers a report from the country of autism. Writing from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person, she tells us how that country is experienced by its inhabitants and how she managed to breach its boundaries to function in the outside world. What emerges in Thinking in Pictures is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who, in gracefully and lucidly bridging the gulf between her condition and our own, sheds light on the riddle of our common identity.
· Driven to Distraction (Revised): Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder by Edward M. Hallowell, John J. Ratey
Groundbreaking and comprehensive, Driven to Distraction has been a lifeline to the approximately eighteen million Americans who are thought to have ADHD. Now the bestselling book is revised and updated with current medical information for a new generation searching for answers.
Through vivid stories and case histories of patients—both adults and children—Hallowell and Ratey explore the varied forms ADHD takes, from hyperactivity to daydreaming. They dispel common myths, offer helpful coping tools, and give a thorough accounting of all treatment options as well as tips for dealing with a diagnosed child, partner, or family member. But most importantly, they focus on the positives that can come with this "disorder"—including high energy, intuitiveness, creativity, and enthusiasm.
· Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students, 2nd Edition / Edition 2 by Gregory Michie
In this time of narrowed curricula and high-stakes accountability, Gregory Michie's tales of struggle and triumph are as relevant as ever. Since it was first published in 1999, Holler has become essential reading for new and seasoned teachers alike, and an inspiring read for many others. Weaving back and forth between Michie's awakening as a teacher and the first-person stories of his students, this highly acclaimed book paints an intimate and compassionate portrait of teaching and learning in urban America. While the popular notion of what it's like to teach in city schools is dominated by horror stories and hero tales, Michie and his students reside somewhere in between these extremes-"between the miracles and the metal detectors."
· Real-World Project Management: New Approaches for Adapting to Change and Uncertainty by Mary DeWeaver, Lori Gillespie, Lori C. Gillespie, Mary Feeherry, Mary F. DeWeaver
The book provides a simple, iterative spiral model for contemporary project management. A chapter is devoted to risk management, showing how to mitigate risk by planning for disruption and change in the life of the project. This fresh approach to project management takes into account the reality of constant change in project factors such as funding, sponsorship, technology, competitive situation, and regulation.
Special Feature
Real-World Project Management has many quoted insights from project managers in industry and government based on their experiences.
· Multiple Intelligences The theory in Practice by Howard Gardner
Howard Gardner's brilliant conception of individual competence has changed the face of education in the twenty-three years since the publication of his classic work, Frames of Mind. Since then thousands of educators, parents, and researchers have explored the practical implications and applications of Multiple Intelligences theory—the powerful notion that there are separate human capacities, ranging from musical intelligence to the intelligence involved in self-understanding. The first decade of research on MI theory and practice was reported in the 1993 edition of Multiple Intelligences. This new edition covers all developments since then and stands as the most thorough and up-to-date account of MI available anywhere. Completely revised throughout, it features new material on global applications and on MI in the workplace, an assessment of MI practice in the current conservative educational climate.
· The Thinking Manager's Toolbox: Effective Processes for Problem Solving and Decision Making / Edition 1 by William J. Altier
In this indispensable book, a widely-experienced business consultant provides a complete set of analytical tools essential to successful trouble-shooting, effective planning, and making better decisions faster, more confidently, and more often.
How can you help your company solve a problem in just a few days that's been plaguing managers for three months? How can you bring a room of executives to a consensus on a critical decision that the CEO and his committee have been wrestling with for years? Of course, this is easier said than done. Indeed, not a week goes by without a major business media story about a company that has fallen on hard times and an executive that has resigned for "personal reasons." The root of the failure is usually ineffective decision-making processes, and ultimately, bad decisions. In the Thinking Manager's Toolbox, veteran consultant and renowned business thinker William J. Altier cogently presents the underpinnings of successful thinking processes and their applications, drawing on practical, real-world experiences. The first section explores the fundamentals of thinking, change, and the critical role that sound thinking processes play in effective problem solving. The second section, your basic toolbox, develops five, in-depth fundamental thinking processes. And a third section, the advanced toolbox, develops more specialized applications for creative problem solving.
Here then is a valuable primer for anyone, whether a middle manager or a CEO, seeking to solve problems and make better decisions more efficiently. The Thinking Manager's Toolbox is an invaluable resource for those seeking to develop the fundamental thinking processes necessary to perform with excellence.
· Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels / Edition 3 by Donald L. Kirkpatrick, James D. Kirkpatrick, James D. Kirkpatrick
The "Kirkpatrick Model" for evaluating training programs is the most widely used approach in the corporate, government, and academic worlds. First developed in 1959, it focuses on four key areas: reaction, learning, behavior, and results. "Evaluating Training Programs" provides a comprehensive guide to Kirkpatrick's four-level model, along with detailed case studies that show how the approach is used successfully in a wide range of programs and institutions. The third edition revises and updates existing material and includes new strategies for managing change effectively.
Working Virtually: Managing People for Successful Virtual Teams and Organizations / Edition 1 by Trina Hoefling
Virtual working is a fact of life as companies manage teams of individuals dispersed on sites across the country or around the globe; take increasing advantage of improving technology and software to telecommute and teleconference; and begin to think about the human element in disaster recovery.
The key to successful dispersed working is not technological expertise, but a clear understanding of what it takes to get the enterprise ready for virtual work, and of the skills for bonding individuals into cohesive, high-performance teams across distances and differences.
This book provides that guidance - through work charts, vivid "composite" examples, definitions and actual cases - and shows how the technological tools support and expand the options for collaboration.
It answers such critical questions as "What makes working virtually work?", "How do we start?", "How do you develop new leaders in a virtual environment?", "What skills do virtual managers and team members need?", "How do you determine how ready they are?", "Which technologies are most appropriate for your purposes?", "What's the impact on existing systems and structures?"
This book is an indispensable practical guide and reference for virtual team leaders, HR managers, CEO's and trainers. It will also be suitable for professional certification and business courses in organizational development.
· Building Great Flash MX Games by Matthew David
* Designed for both professionals and hobbyists, this is the most complete book on creating sophisticated games with Macromedia Flash MX
• Shows readers how to harness the full potential of Flash MX and Flash ActionScript
• Provides hands-on advice for creating commercial games, as well as games to boost a Web site's "stickiness," perk up presentations, or enhance educational materials
• Explains the tools, scripts, and other building blocks of Flash games tools and then shows how to put them together
• Companion Web site includes all source code and game artwork from the book as well as links to free game development tools and product trials
· Multimedia: Making It Work, Sixth Edition / Edition 6 by Tay Vaughan, Chris Johnson, Chris (Ed.) Johnson
This book teaches the fundamental concepts and skills multimedia professionals use every day. Starting with the important building blocks -- text, graphics, audio, video, and animation -- you will learn how to plan and manage multimedia projects, from dynamic CD-ROMs and DVDs to professional-looking Web sites.
· Web Design Studio Secrets by Deke McClelland, Katrin Eismann, Terri Stone, Steve Broback
Do you keep an archive of killer Web sites? You're not alone. Fifteen leading Web designers reveal the secrets behind their favorite sites in the updated edition of Web Design Studio Secrets. Featuring interviews with the experts, undocumented tips and techniques, and full-color illustrations in an oversized format, this edition also presents case studies packed with advice.
Discover what's in a winning site — Dynamic HTML, Flash animation, and JavaScript rollovers are among the contenders. The CD-ROM contains demo software from key industry players, artwork from the book, and QuickTime interviews with featured artists. With Web Design Studio Secrets, 2nd Ed., you'll find out what the competition's been up to and how to use it to your advantage
· Photoshop Elements Drop Dead Photography Techniques by Steve Luck
A brand-new companion to the bestselling Digital Photographer's Guide to Photoshop Elements provides photographers with the practical, technical information they need to take full advantage of the most popular image-processing software on the market.
Photoshop Elements is a powerful image-processing package that enables users to produce sophisticated enhancements to their digital image files and photographs. With this comprehensive, practical, and illustrated handbook, newcomers to the technology can quickly learn the most effective, efficient ways to avail themselves of all its creative possibilities. Page by page, the guide bursts with authoritative tips and techniques for performing specific edits and adjustments to original digital photos. All the fundamental enhancements receive extensive explanation, including exposure correction, contrast adjustment, tonal alteration, and color balance modification. Go further, and use the software to mimic traditional photographic processes such as hand-tinting, create lighting effects, or build complex multilayered montages. The many easy-to-follow explanations and well-chosen examples make every step of the process wonderfully clear.
· The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Going Broke by Elizabeth Warren, Amelia Warren Tyagi, Amelia Warren Tyagi
In this revolutionary exposé, Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren and financial consultant Amelia Tyagi show that today's middle-class parents are increasingly trapped by financial meltdowns. Astonishingly, sending mothers to work has made families more vulnerable to financial disaster than ever before. Today's two-income family earns 75% more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but has 25% less discretionary income to cover living costs. This is "the rare financial book that sidesteps accusations of individual wastefulness to focus on institutional changes," raved the Boston Globe. Warren and Tyagi reveal how the ferocious bidding war for housing and education has silently engulfed America's suburbs, driving up the cost of keeping families in the middle class. The authors show why the usual remedies-child-support enforcement, subsidized daycare, and higher salaries for women-won't solve the problem. But as the Wall Street Journal observed, "The book is brimming with proposed solutions to the nail-biting anxiety that the middle class finds itself in: subsidized day care, school vouchers, new bank regulation, among other measures." From Senator Edward M. Kennedy to Dr. Phil to Bill Moyers, The Two-Income Trap has created a sensation among economists, politicians, and families-all those who care about America's middle-class crisis.
· Coaching: Evoking Excellence In Others by James Flaherty, Flaherty
Coaching is based on the premise we must understand people before we can coach them. Flaherty asks fundamental questions rather than supply "easy to apply" tips and surface bandaids. "Coaching is not telling people what to do; it's giving them a chance to examine what they are doing in the light of their intentions." (from the Preface) "A coach is someone who builds a respectful relationship with a client and then researches the situations the client finds himself in, with particular emphasis on the client's interpretation of the events." (from Chapter 1) Then, in partnership with the client, the coach can work to altering actions to bring about expected outcomes. This book provides the language and operative principles and assessment models and sample coaching conversations necessary to do that.
The book is grounded in many different paths of wisdom including time-tested philosophies, sociological premises and psychological discussions. Chapter bibliographies encourage further interdisciplinary reading.
· This book is a coaching tool enabling the reader to become a business coach who can self-correct and self-generate your own innovations
· It addresses the question: How do I contribute to someone's competence in a respectful, dignified, effective way?
· A Framework for Understanding Poverty: A Cognitive Approach by Ruby Payne
When viewed through an economic lens, poverty can be defined as an absence of resources. Since 1995, Framework's basic premise is that the middle-class understandings of those who work with children and adults in poverty are often ill-suited for connecting with and helping people build up resources and rise out of poverty. Now, 18 years and 1.5 million copies later, Framework: A Cognitive Approach has been revised, updated and expanded. The 5th edition features an enhanced chapter on instruction and achievement; greater emphasis on the thinking, community, and learning patterns involved in breaking out of poverty; plentiful citations, new case studies, and data: more details findings about interventions, resources, and causes of poverty, and a review of the outlook for people in poverty—and those who work with them.
· Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family? by Ethan Watters
In his early thirties, Ethan Watters began to realize that none of his friends were following the paths of their parents. Instead of settling down in couples and starting families, they lived and vacationed in groups, worked together at businesses they'd started, and met every week for dinner. As he started to document this phenomenon, he encountered countless other "tribes," in cities all over the U.S. Watters explores why tribe members have embraced this structure and what kind of affection and stability they find there, and contends that the conventional wisdom painting Generation X as isolated, selfish slackers may hide an unexpected, much warmer picture.
· The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach by Howard Gardner
Merging cognitive science with educational agenda, Gardner makes an eloquent case for restructuring our schools by showing just how ill-suited our minds and natural patterns of learning are to the prevailing modes of education. This reissue includes a new introduction by the author.
· When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor by William Julius Wilson
Wilson, one of our foremost authorities on race and poverty, challenges decades of liberal and conservative pieties to look squarely at the devastating effects that joblessness has had on our urban ghettos. Marshaling a vast array of data and the personal stories of hundreds of men and women, Wilson persuasively argues that problems endemic to America's inner cities—from fatherless households to drugs and violent crime—stem directly from the disappearance of blue-collar jobs in the wake of a globalized economy. Wilson's achievement is to portray this crisis as one that affects all Americans, and to propose solutions whose benefits would be felt across our society. At a time when welfare is ending and our country's racial dialectic is more strained than ever, When Work Disappears is a sane, courageous, and desperately important work.
"Wilson is the keenest liberal analyst of the most perplexing of all American problems...[This book is] more ambitious and more accessible than anything he has done before."
—The New Yorker
· Cases in Online Interview Research / Edition 1 by Janet Salmons
In an era of constrained research budgets, online interviewing opens up immense possibilities: a researcher can literally conduct a global study without ever leaving home. But more than a decade after these technologies started to become available, there are still few studies on how to utilize online interviews in research. This book provides 10 cases of research conducted using online interviews, with data collected through text-based, videoconferencing, multichannel meetings, and immersive 3-D environments. Each case is followed by two commentaries: one from another expert contributor, the second from Janet Salmons, as editor
· The Pact by Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt, Lisa Frazier Page
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A remarkable story about the power of friendship.
Chosen by Essence to be among the forty most influential African Americans, the three doctors grew up in the streets of Newark, facing city life's temptations, pitfalls, even jail. But one day these three young men made a pact. They promised each other they would all become doctors, and stick it out together through the long, difficult journey to attaining that dream. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt are not only friends to this day—they are all doctors.
This is a story about joining forces and beating the odds. A story about changing your life, and the lives of those you love most... together.
· Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators by Clay Shirky
The author of the breakout hit Here Comes Everybody reveals how new technology is changing us for the better.
In his bestselling Here Comes Everybody, Internet guru Clay Shirky provided readers with a much-needed primer for the digital age. Now, with Cognitive Surplus, he reveals how new digital technology is unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world. For the first time, people are embracing new media that allow them to pool their efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind-expanding reference tools like Wikipedia to life-saving Web sites like Ushahidi.com, which allows Kenyans to report acts of violence in real time. Cognitive Surplus explores what's possible when people unite to use their intellect, energy, and time for the greater good.
· Designing Effective Instruction / Edition 7 by Gary R. Morrison, Steven M. Ross, Howard K. Kalman, Jerrold E. Kemp
This book includes many new, enhanced features and content. Overall, the text integrates two success stories of practicing instructional designers with a focus on the process of instructional design. The text includes stories of a relatively new designer and another with eight to ten years of experience, weaving their scenarios into the chapter narrative. Throughout the book, there are updated citations, content, and information, as well as more discussions on learning styles, examples of cognitive procedure, and explanations on sequencing from cognitive load theory.
· Adult Children of Abusive Parents by Steven Farmer
A history of a childhood abuse is not a life sentence. Here is hope, healing, and a chance to recover the self-lost in childhood. Drawing on his extensive work with Adult Children, and on his own experience as a survivor of emotional neglect, therapist Steven Farmer demonstrates that through exercises and journal work, his program can help lead you through grieving your lost childhood, to become your own parent, and integrate the healing aspects of spiritual, physical, and emotional recovery into your adult life.
· Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin, Oliver Sacks (Foreword by)
Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is a gifted animal scientist who has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the United States. She also lectures widely on autism—because Temple Grandin is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us.
In this unprecedented book, Grandin delivers a report from the country of autism. Writing from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person, she tells us how that country is experienced by its inhabitants and how she managed to breach its boundaries to function in the outside world. What emerges in Thinking in Pictures is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who, in gracefully and lucidly bridging the gulf between her condition and our own, sheds light on the riddle of our common identity.
· Driven to Distraction (Revised): Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder by Edward M. Hallowell, John J. Ratey
Groundbreaking and comprehensive, Driven to Distraction has been a lifeline to the approximately eighteen million Americans who are thought to have ADHD. Now the bestselling book is revised and updated with current medical information for a new generation searching for answers.
Through vivid stories and case histories of patients—both adults and children—Hallowell and Ratey explore the varied forms ADHD takes, from hyperactivity to daydreaming. They dispel common myths, offer helpful coping tools, and give a thorough accounting of all treatment options as well as tips for dealing with a diagnosed child, partner, or family member. But most importantly, they focus on the positives that can come with this "disorder"—including high energy, intuitiveness, creativity, and enthusiasm.
· Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students, 2nd Edition / Edition 2 by Gregory Michie
In this time of narrowed curricula and high-stakes accountability, Gregory Michie's tales of struggle and triumph are as relevant as ever. Since it was first published in 1999, Holler has become essential reading for new and seasoned teachers alike, and an inspiring read for many others. Weaving back and forth between Michie's awakening as a teacher and the first-person stories of his students, this highly acclaimed book paints an intimate and compassionate portrait of teaching and learning in urban America. While the popular notion of what it's like to teach in city schools is dominated by horror stories and hero tales, Michie and his students reside somewhere in between these extremes-"between the miracles and the metal detectors."
· Real-World Project Management: New Approaches for Adapting to Change and Uncertainty by Mary DeWeaver, Lori Gillespie, Lori C. Gillespie, Mary Feeherry, Mary F. DeWeaver
The book provides a simple, iterative spiral model for contemporary project management. A chapter is devoted to risk management, showing how to mitigate risk by planning for disruption and change in the life of the project. This fresh approach to project management takes into account the reality of constant change in project factors such as funding, sponsorship, technology, competitive situation, and regulation.
Special Feature
Real-World Project Management has many quoted insights from project managers in industry and government based on their experiences.
· Multiple Intelligences The theory in Practice by Howard Gardner
Howard Gardner's brilliant conception of individual competence has changed the face of education in the twenty-three years since the publication of his classic work, Frames of Mind. Since then thousands of educators, parents, and researchers have explored the practical implications and applications of Multiple Intelligences theory—the powerful notion that there are separate human capacities, ranging from musical intelligence to the intelligence involved in self-understanding. The first decade of research on MI theory and practice was reported in the 1993 edition of Multiple Intelligences. This new edition covers all developments since then and stands as the most thorough and up-to-date account of MI available anywhere. Completely revised throughout, it features new material on global applications and on MI in the workplace, an assessment of MI practice in the current conservative educational climate.
· The Thinking Manager's Toolbox: Effective Processes for Problem Solving and Decision Making / Edition 1 by William J. Altier
In this indispensable book, a widely-experienced business consultant provides a complete set of analytical tools essential to successful trouble-shooting, effective planning, and making better decisions faster, more confidently, and more often.
How can you help your company solve a problem in just a few days that's been plaguing managers for three months? How can you bring a room of executives to a consensus on a critical decision that the CEO and his committee have been wrestling with for years? Of course, this is easier said than done. Indeed, not a week goes by without a major business media story about a company that has fallen on hard times and an executive that has resigned for "personal reasons." The root of the failure is usually ineffective decision-making processes, and ultimately, bad decisions. In the Thinking Manager's Toolbox, veteran consultant and renowned business thinker William J. Altier cogently presents the underpinnings of successful thinking processes and their applications, drawing on practical, real-world experiences. The first section explores the fundamentals of thinking, change, and the critical role that sound thinking processes play in effective problem solving. The second section, your basic toolbox, develops five, in-depth fundamental thinking processes. And a third section, the advanced toolbox, develops more specialized applications for creative problem solving.
Here then is a valuable primer for anyone, whether a middle manager or a CEO, seeking to solve problems and make better decisions more efficiently. The Thinking Manager's Toolbox is an invaluable resource for those seeking to develop the fundamental thinking processes necessary to perform with excellence.
· Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels / Edition 3 by Donald L. Kirkpatrick, James D. Kirkpatrick, James D. Kirkpatrick
The "Kirkpatrick Model" for evaluating training programs is the most widely used approach in the corporate, government, and academic worlds. First developed in 1959, it focuses on four key areas: reaction, learning, behavior, and results. "Evaluating Training Programs" provides a comprehensive guide to Kirkpatrick's four-level model, along with detailed case studies that show how the approach is used successfully in a wide range of programs and institutions. The third edition revises and updates existing material and includes new strategies for managing change effectively.