Social Learning

Why is it so hard to get students to pay attention? Conventional wisdom blames iPhones, insisting that access to technology has ruined students' ability to focus. The logical response is to ban electronics in class. But acclaimed educator James M. Lang argues that this solution obscures a deeper problem: how we teach is often at odds with how students learn. Classrooms are designed to force students into long periods of intense focus, but emerging science reveals that the brain is wired for distraction. We learn best when able to actively seek and synthesize new information.

The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it.

America is in crisis, from the university to the workplace. Toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. The Diversity Delusion argues that the root of this problem is the belief in America’s endemic racism and sexism, a belief that has engendered a metastasizing diversity bureaucracy in society and academia.

Rich tasks, collaborative work, number talks, problem-based learning, direct instruction…with so many possible approaches, how do we know which ones work the best? In Visible Learning for Mathematics, six acclaimed educators assert it’s not about which one—it’s about when—and show you how to design high-impact instruction so all students demonstrate more than a year’s worth of mathematics learning for a year spent in school.

What month is it? The Months of the Year give us clues! Months are patterns of time that help us know what we might be doing and what the weather will be like, now and later in the year.

In this audiobook, Ellen Langer uses her innovative theory of mindulness, introduced in her influential earlier book, to dramatically enhance the way we learn. Mindful learning takes place with an awareness of context and of the ever-changing nature of information. Learning without this awareness, has severely limited uses and often sets on up for failure. With stunning applications to skills as diverse as paying attention, CPR, investment analysis, psychotherapy, or playing a musical instrument, this audiobook is for all who are curious and intellectually adventurous.

F--k the F--kity F--kin' F--ker. Fans of Katherine Dunn won't be surprised that this was her father's favorite sentence, or that, as a young girl, she heard it as a kind of profane poem, a secret song. For many of us, the language of Geek Love carries a similar staying power, born of Dunn's agile use of language and her strange, beautiful diction. And as a true exegete of the expletive, she remained undividedly devoted to obscenity - both as scholar and practitioner.

American Libraries editor in chief Leonard Kniffel offers a compelling collection of interviews with prominent figures--all of whom have special connections to libraries. From President Barack Obama to actress Julie Andrews; from basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to former First Lady and librarian Laura Bush and many others, stars of literature, politics, entertainment, and the public arena speak with Kniffel about the ways libraries have been critical in their lives.

Transforming School Culture provides a school improvement plan for leaders to overcome staff division, improve relationships, and transform toxic school cultures into healthy ones. Dr. Anthony Muhammad contends that in order to transform school culture, we must understand why teachers continue to hold on to models or beliefs contrary to those put forth by their school or district. He explores the human behavior, social conditions, and history that cause the underlying conflict among the four different types of teachers in a school.

The best five books on anonymity in existence! Want to surf the web anonymously? Cloak yourself in shadow on the Deep Web or The Hidden Wiki? I will show you how to become a ghost in the machine - leaving no tracks back to your ISP - whether on the Deep Web or regular Internet. This audiobook covers it all: encrypting your files, securing your PC, masking your Online footsteps with Tor, VPNs, Freenet, and bitcoins, and all while giving you peace of mind with total 100 percent anonymity.

What do taxes, jury duty, and being good citizens have to do with helping our government? Using engaging, age-appropriate language, listeners understand our responsibilities as American citizens and learn how to take active roles in our government. Fully translated Spanish text.

What are our civil rights, and how are they different from our legal rights? What do gender, age, discrimination, and the U.S. Constitution have to do with our civil rights? Learn to decipher our nation's civil rights laws and learn how they protect our citizens.

Never before in the history of the world has more time, effort, and resources been invested into a single generation than the Millennials. Be it incredibly expensive college degrees, perfectly privileged diets, life-coping drugs, uncountable therapist visits, even bending reality so everybody was impossibly a winner, no expense was spared for the most pampered generation in human history. But $30 trillion and 20 years later we have the biggest failure of a human crop in the history of the world.

Jay Garfield, a leading expert on Buddhist philosophy, offers a brief and radically clear account of an idea that at first might seem frightening but that promises to liberate us and improve our lives, our relationships, and the world. Drawing on Indian and East Asian Buddhism, Daoism, Western philosophy, and cognitive neuroscience, Garfield shows why it is perfectly natural to think you have a self—and why it actually makes no sense at all and is even dangerous. Most importantly, he explains why shedding the illusion that you have a self can make you a better person.

Italian doctor and educator Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome Medical School. This masterpiece of educational philosophy is still relevant today, as the author explains to parents and teachers how to free a child through its own efforts.

In this modern classic, Annette Simmons reminds us that the oldest tool of influence is also the most powerful. Fully revised and updated to account for new technology and social media, along with two new chapters on the role of stories in the development of civilization and how to adjust your story to your specific goal, Simmons showcases over 100 examples of effective storytelling drawn from the front lines of business and government, as well as myths, fables, and parables from around the world.

This book throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society.

Offering a nuanced and transformative take on immigration, multiculturalism, and America's role on the global stage, The Newcomers follows and reflects on the lives of 22 immigrant teenagers throughout the course of their 2015-2016 school year at Denver's South High School. Unfamiliar with American culture or the English language, the students range from the ages of 14 to 19 and come from nations struggling with drought, famine, or war.

The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry, rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With the stakes so high, why haven't we moved beyond peaceful protest? In this lyrical manifesto, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse.

Published in 1762, it had a profound impact on the approach to the education and upbringing of a child, through infancy, childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. This was partly fuelled by the format – for Rousseau presents before us the boy Emile, taking him through the various stages of life, and as Emile becomes a young man, introducing a female counterpart, Sophie. This device personalises what would otherwise be a more formal philosophical presentation.