Instead of fueling the debate, Dr. Jan Burkins and Kari Yates have immersed themselves in the research and produced Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom . This concise and practical guide integrates effective reading strategies from each perspective. Every chapter of Shifting the Balance focuses on one of the six simple and scientifically sound shifts reading teachers can make to strengthen their approach to early reading instruction in these areas:Reading ComprehensionPhonemic AwarenessPhonicsHigh-Frequency WordsCueing SystemsText SelectionPractical Instruction for Primary Grades: Whether your students are just learning to read or building more advanced reading comprehensive skills,  Shifting the Balance  is designed to help teachers meet the instructional needs of K-2 students.Six Manageable Shifts: Each chapter focuses on a key shift that helps educators understand common misconceptions and adjust their thinking around some common instructional practices that teachers have been using for decades.Evidence-Based Instruction: Burkins and Yates offer busy educators a blueprint for integrating finding from brain research, cognitive science, and child development into their daily instruction, while keeping meaningful experiences with books a priority.Classroom Applications: Shifting the Balance is full of sample activities and classroom vignettes that paint a picture of what these shifts look like in action with roomful of learners.The book has already helped countless educators by taking the guesswork out of how to blend best practices with the latest research while keeping students at the forefront of reading instruction. "We've written this book to support you in making sound decisions anchored in the best of science, the truth of responsiveness, and a relentless focus on providing all children learning experiences saturated with meaning," the authors write.

    In Burn Math Class, Jason Wilkes takes the traditional approach to how we learn math -- with its unwelcoming textbooks, unexplained rules, and authoritarian assertions-and sets it on fire. Focusing on how mathematics is created rather than on mathematical facts, Wilkes teaches the subject in a way that requires no memorization and no prior knowledge beyond addition and multiplication. From these simple foundations, Burn Math Class shows how mathematics can be (re)invented from scratch without preexisting textbooks and courses. We can discover math on our own through experimentation and failure, without appealing to any outside authority. When math is created free from arcane notations and pretentious jargon that hide the simplicity of mathematical concepts, it can be understood organically -- and it becomes fun! Following this unconventional approach, Burn Math Class leads the reader from the basics of elementary arithmetic to various "advanced" topics, such as time-dilation in special relativity, Taylor series, and calculus in infinite-dimensional spaces. Along the way, Wilkes argues that orthodox mathematics education has been teaching the subject backward: calculus belongs before many of its so-called prerequisites, and those prerequisites cannot be fully understood without calculus. Like the smartest, craziest teacher you've ever had, Wilkes guides you on an adventure in mathematical creation that will radically change the way you think about math. Revealing the beauty and simplicity of this timeless subject, Burn Math Class turns everything that seems difficult about mathematics upside down and sideways until you understand just how easy math can be.

    This step-by-step system only works with understanding and a disciplined plan. Clayton and Natali give you just that by breaking it all down for you in this book. They arm you with the knowledge and inspiration to free yourself from the dead weight of your mortgage so that you can enjoy your monthly income however the heck you want to! Clayton and Natali Morris met while working as TV news broadcasters. Clayton has been a news anchor for over 15 years and Natali has worked for CBS and NBC for most of her career. In 2010 they started a family and got serious about building legacy wealth for their three children, Miles, Ava, and Eve. They podcast, write, and speak around the world about personal finance and financial empowerment in order to help other families like theirs employ the skills they have learned along the way to attain true financial freedom.

    Topics are broken down into three major conceptual pieces: Virtualization, Concurrency, and Persistence. Includes all major components of modern systems including scheduling, virtual memory management, disk subsystems and I/O, file systems, and even a short introduction to distributed systems.

    Reading this was like reading the blueprint for how the best projects are managed at Microsoft... I wish we always put these lessons into action!" --Joe Belfiore, General Manager, E-home Division, Microsoft Corporation "Berkun has written a fast paced, jargon-free and witty guide to what he wisely refers to as the 'art' of project management. It's a great introduction to the discipline. Seasoned and new managers will benefit from Berkun's perspectives." --Joe Mirza, Director, CNET Networks (Cnet.com) "Most books with the words 'project management' in the title are dry tomes. If that's what you are expecting to hear from Berkun's book, you will be pleasantly surprised. Sure, it's about project management. But it's also about creativity, situational problem-solving, and leadership. If you're a team member, project manager, or even a non-technical stakeholder, Scott offers dozens of practical tools and techniques you can use, and questions you can ask, to ensure your projects succeed." --Bill Bliss, Senior VP of product and customer experience, expedia.com In The Art of Project Management, you'll learn from a veteran manager of software and web development how to plan, manage, and lead projects. This personal account of hard lessons learned over a decade of work in the industry distills complex concepts and challenges into practical nuggets of useful advice. Inspiring, funny, honest, and compelling, this is the book you and your team need to have within arms reach. It will serve you well with your current work, and on future projects to come. Topics include:How to make things happenMaking good decisionsSpecifications and requirementsIdeas and what to do with themHow not to annoy peopleLeadership and trustThe truth about making datesWhat to do when things go wrong

    Each chapter outlines one of the 50 ideas and gives three strategies for putting it into practice. Some ideas will surprise you, all will inspire you. Put these simple strategies together and you have a recipe for a better life, a formula that will unlock a more productive you. Whether you want to improve your efficiency, clear your desk, or be on top of your work, this book provides the tools and techniques you need to be more productive. With dedicated sections on having a productive attitude, managing specific projects, aids to productivity and productivity in action, it gives you everything you need to know.

    In this one-of-a-kind account, you'll see how the developers responsible for these flaws patched the bugs—or failed to respond at all. As you follow Klein on his journey, you'll gain deep technical knowledge and insight into how hackers approach difficult problems and experience the true joys (and frustrations) of bug hunting.Along the way you'll learn how to:Use field-tested techniques to find bugs, like identifying and tracing user input data and reverse engineering Exploit vulnerabilities like NULL pointer dereferences, buffer overflows, and type conversion flaws Develop proof of concept code that verifies the security flaw Report bugs to vendors or third party brokersA Bug Hunter's Diary is packed with real-world examples of vulnerable code and the custom programs used to find and test bugs. Whether you're hunting bugs for fun, for profit, or to make the world a safer place, you'll learn valuable new skills by looking over the shoulder of a professional bug hunter in action.

    Almost 30 years later, at the pinnacle of his success as founder and leader of Dell Technologies, he found himself embroiled in a battle for his company's survival. What he'd do next could ensure its legacy--or destroy it completely.Play Nice But Win is a riveting account of the three battles waged for Dell Technologies: one to launch it, one to keep it, and one to transform it. For the first time, Dell reveals the highs and lows of the company's evolution amidst a rapidly changing industry--and his own, as he matured into the CEO it needed. With humor and humility, he recalls the mentors who showed him how to turn his passion into a business; the competitors who became friends, foes, or both; and the sharks that circled, looking for weakness. What emerges is the long-term vision underpinning his success: that technology is ultimately about people and their potential.More than an honest portrait of a leader at a crossroads, Play Nice But Win is a survival story proving that while anyone with technological insight and entrepreneurial zeal might build something great--it takes a leader to build something that lasts.

    Rather than self-promoting, we must transform our organizations to be people-centric. This sounds like a no-brainer, but looking closer shows just how little this is true and how impactful the change would be if it were. Whether you're a business leader, a change advocate, or a movement maker, Know What You're FOR will help you - and your organization - thrive. It's what happens when you create an organization focused on who it is FOR. This is the future. Thriving organizations will be more concerned with becoming raving fans of their customers than they are trying to convince customers to become raving fans of the organization. This isn't theory. Jeff Henderson has experienced it.  Working with companies like Chick-fil-A and the Atlanta Braves, then serving as a pastor for 15 years at one of the country's largest and most influential churches, North Point, Jeff knows what success looks like for healthy organizations and healthy lives. With fascinating stories from a host of entrepreneurs and Jeff's remarkable career, Know What You're FOR equips you with a simple strategy and the tools for extraordinary growth. You'll discover how to:Work FOR your current and future customers with a new, effective methodBe FOR your team and help your people reach full potentialCreate a ripple impact by being FOR your communityLive and work your best by caring FOR yourselfIn a hypercritical, cynical world, one that is often known for what it's against, let's be a group of people known for who and what we're FOR.  It's a powerful strategy for business. But more importantly, it is a revolutionary way to live.

    With Step By Step, you set the pace-building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Topics include building a project plan and fine-tuning the details; scheduling tasks, assigning resources, and managing dependencies; monitoring progress and costs; keeping projects on track; communicating project data through Gantt charts and other views.

    Algorithms have made our lives more efficient, more entertaining, and, sometimes, better informed. At the same time, complex algorithms are increasingly violating the basic rights of individual citizens. Allegedly anonymized datasets routinely leak our most sensitive personal information; statistical models for everything from mortgages to college admissions reflect racial and gender bias. Meanwhile, users manipulate algorithms to "game" search engines, spam filters, online reviewing services, and navigation apps.Understanding and improving the science behind the algorithms that run our lives is rapidly becoming one of the most pressing issues of this century. Traditional fixes, such as laws, regulations and watchdog groups, have proven woefully inadequate. Reporting from the cutting edge of scientific research, The Ethical Algorithm offers a new approach: a set of principled solutions based on the emerging and exciting science of socially aware algorithm design. Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth explain how we can better embed human principles into machine code - without halting the advance of data-driven scientific exploration. Weaving together innovative research with stories of citizens, scientists, and activists on the front lines, The Ethical Algorithm offers a compelling vision for a future, one in which we can better protect humans from the unintended impacts of algorithms while continuing to inspire wondrous advances in technology.

     “Deeply reported and bracingly written, this book is an indispensable guide to modern innovation and entrepreneurship.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Code BreakerToday, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered the technology industry’s most powerful network. Since leaving PayPal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven twenty-first-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names stir passions; they’re as controversial as they are admired. Yet for all their influence, the story of where they first started has gone largely untold. Before igniting the commercial space race or jumpstarting social media’s rise, they were the unknown creators of a scrappy online payments start-up called PayPal. In building what became one of the world’s foremost companies, they faced bruising competition, internal strife, the emergence of widespread online fraud, and the devastating dot-com bust of the 2000s. Their success was anything but certain. In The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, award-winning author and biographer Jimmy Soni explores PayPal’s turbulent early days. With hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to thousands of pages of internal material, he shows how the seeds of so much of what shapes our world today—fast-scaling digital start-ups, cashless currency concepts, mobile money transfer—were planted two decades ago. He also reveals the stories of countless individuals who were left out of the front-page features and banner headlines but who were central to PayPal’s success. Described as “an intensely magnetic chronicle” (The New York Times) and “engrossing” (Business Insider), The Founders is a story of iteration and inventiveness—the products of which have cast a long and powerful shadow over modern life. This narrative illustrates how this rare assemblage of talent came to work together and how their collaboration changed our world forever.

    In Mapping Cloud Nine, bestselling author and award-winning journalist Steven Kotler takes us on a heady thrill ride through the history of human potential—and how what we’ve learned so far might unlock even greater levels of creativity, performance, and meaning in our lives.From Nietzsche to now—a tour of human consciousnessIn this six-part audio program, Kotler bridges science and spirituality to explore how our understanding of peak experiences has evolved over time—from early inquiries into altered and mystical states; to the birth of positive psychology and research on high performers; to pioneering studies on meditation and near-death experiences; and into current explorations of psychedelics, flow states, and technological breakthroughs. A brilliant synthesizer and gifted storyteller, Kotler paints a compelling portrait of our greatest human potential, inspiring us to leverage this growing body of research and step into new realms of possibility. HIGHLIGHTS- The evolutionary impulse for altered states of mind—psychedelics throughout time- The neurobiology of flow states, mystical experiences, and hallucinations- The spiritual path and the high-performance path—are they one and the same?- Altered states lead to altered traits—the next wave of consciousness hacking- Why bridging the gap between science and spirituality leads to even greater breakthroughs- How you can leverage flow states for a more meaningful—and interesting—life

    Learn all the tricks nomads use to get plane tickets for a fraction of what normal people pay, how to maximize points and loyalty programs, how to access airport lounges and other VIP perks, and how to work and make friends around the world. You’ll even discover how to have multiple homes around the world for less than it costs for a one-bedroom in your home city. Most importantly, learn how to travel in harmony with regular life, rather than have it become a stressful disruption as it is for most people. Forever Nomad is a book about making the entire world into your world, and doing so in a sustainable and enjoyable way.

     Real Spanish people don’t speak like your textbook… so it’s no wonder you feel unprepared when it’s your turn to speak! This book fixes that. For the first time, you’ll learn to speak Spanish in the REAL world, with 101 authentic conversations in simple, spoken Spanish, so you can become confident in the words, phrases and expressions you need to communicate like a local. You’ll be transported into a real-world story that unfolds between six Spanish characters, told by the people themselves in 101 authentic conversations. Over 15,000 words of real Spanish, you’ll immerse yourself in a gripping Spanish drama and get an education in natural Spanish in the process. Here’s what you’ll get: 101 conversations in simple Spanish, so you can learn the real Spanish spoken in the street, understand spoken Spanish with ease, and have Spanish roll off your tongue more fluently Over 15,000 words of dialogue - an unparalleled resource that will immerse you in Spanish, at a level you can understand, so you can learn real spoken Spanish without getting lost or overwhelmed Real, daily spoken Spanish throughout - it’s as if we held up a microphone and recorded the exact words coming out of people’s mouths - so you can learn the expressions that real people use on the street (not in textbooks). You’ll sound more authentic when you speak and make Spanish-speaking friends more easily. Situational dialogues from typical daily circumstances, so you’ll prepare yourself to survive realistic Spanish encounters, in shops and cafés, and make meeting people and making arrangements second nature Conversations that are carefully written to be accessible for beginners (A2-B1 on the CEFR), so you can start to learn from real, spoken conversations, even as a beginner, without having to go through the rollercoaster of difficult conversations with strangers Each conversation is limited to around 15 lines of dialogue (150 words), so you can get that crucial sense of achievement and motivation when you finish each conversation, and say “I actually understood all of that!” Word lists with English definitions in every chapter, so you can get instant translations of any difficult words and focus on reading and enjoying the stories rather than wasting time in a dictionary Summaries of each conversation which contextualise each dialogue, so you can easily follow the plot and enjoy the story without getting lost The story is set in Spain and includes expressions that are typical in Castilian Spanish. However, since the conversations use mostly “neutral” Spanish, you’ll have plenty to learn, whether you’re learning the Spanish of Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, or even your local Spanish-speaking community! Created by Olly Richards, internationally-renowned language teacher and author, 101 Conversations in Real Spoken Spanish gives you an education in real Spanish that you won’t find anywhere else. You’ll be better prepared for using Spanish in the real world, speak with more confidence, and take a giant leap towards fluency in Spanish! SCROLL UP AND GRAB YOUR COPY NOW