Throughout, the emphasis is on promoting a plain English style. This little book can help you communicate more effectively by showing you how to enliven your sentences.

    This is for the mothers out there that want to run the home and raise the children in a stress-free and affordable way. This is for the wife that would like to be the hostess with the mostess, but not toil and fret all day and has no talents in making radishes into roses. This is for the real housewive's that are a little funky, want to be frugal, want the adorable home, maybe a little farm in their Urban backyard, purposely don't match their sheets, like fun accent walls in each room, want to homeschool their children, need to do a major household budget, and downsize, but won't compromise on a good life. This is for the families that want to cut the grocery bill big time and still have their organics and non-GMO popcorn. This is also for the families happy to ditch the car and walk to save money and the environment but won't give up their entertaining and gatherings. This book is loaded with great advice and tips on everything from a household budget, making your own cleaners, going a little country in the city, throwing parties with a few dollars, and having a good life on very little.

    This notion follows us into adulthood, where we tend to simply accept these established beliefs about our skillsets (i.e. that we don’t have “a math brain” or that we aren’t “the creative type”). These damaging—and as new science has revealed, false—assumptions have influenced all of us at some time, affecting our confidence and willingness to try new things and limiting our choices, and, ultimately, our futures.Stanford University professor, bestselling author, and acclaimed educator Jo Boaler has spent decades studying the impact of beliefs and bias on education. In Limitless Mind , she explodes these myths and reveals the six keys to unlocking our boundless learning potential. Her research proves that those who achieve at the highest levels do not do so because of a genetic inclination toward any one skill but because of the keys that she reveals in the book. Our brains are not “fixed,” but entirely capable of change, growth, adaptability, and rewiring. Want to be fluent in mathematics? Learn a foreign language? Play the guitar? Write a book? The truth is not only that anyone at any age can learn anything, but the act of learning itself fundamentally changes who we are, and as Boaler argues so elegantly in the pages of this book, what we go on to achieve.

    Burger teaches at Wiliams College; Starbird at The University of Texas at Austin. Here, they “reveal the hidden powers of deep understanding (earth), failure (fire), questions (air), the flow of ideas (water), and the quintessential element of change that brings all four elements together. By mastering and applying these practical and proven strategies, readers develop better thinking habits and learn how to create their own successes.”Brilliant people aren't a special breed--they just use their minds differently. By using the straightforward and thought-provoking techniques in "The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking," you will regularly find imaginative solutions to difficult challenges, and you will discover new ways of looking at your world and yourself--revealing previously hidden opportunities.The book offers real-life stories, explicit action items, and concrete methods that allow you to attain a deeper understanding of any issue, exploit the power of failure as a step toward success, develop a habit of creating probing questions, see the world of ideas as an ever-flowing stream of thought, and embrace the uplifting reality that we are all capable of change. No matter who you are, the practical mind-sets introduced in the book will empower you to realize any goal in a more creative, intelligent, and effective manner. Filled with engaging examples that unlock truths about thinking in every walk of life, "The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking" is written for all who want to reach their fullest potential--including students, parents, teachers, businesspeople, professionals, athletes, artists, leaders, and lifelong learners.Whenever you are stuck, need a new idea, or want to learn and grow, "The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking" will inspire and guide you on your way.

    Because this is a rapidly changing field, this book focuses on enduring methods for teaching online. The companion website contains updates, technical helps, and other resources."My hope is that you'll end the semester with a new level of confidence and with course evaluations that let you know that you are on the right track. More importantly, I hope that you and your students will be experiencing a vibrant learning relationship. If you have been teaching online for a while, I think you'll find some ways to improve your game." - Author, Aaron Johnson

    How could looking at Monet’s water lily paintings help save your company millions? How can checking out people’s footwear foil a terrorist attack? How can your choice of adjective win an argument, calm your kid, or catch a thief?   In her celebrated seminar, the Art of Perception, art historian Amy Herman has trained experts from many fields how to perceive and communicate better. By showing people how to look closely at images, she helps them hone their “visual intelligence,” a set of skills we all possess but few of us know how to use properly. She has spent more than a decade teaching doctors to observe patients instead of their charts, helping police officers separate facts from opinions when investigating a crime, and training professionals from the FBI, the State Department, Fortune 500 companies, and the military to recognize the most pertinent and useful information. Her lessons highlight far more than the physical objects you may be missing; they teach you how to recognize the talents, opportunities, and dangers that surround you every day.   Whether you want to be more effective on the job, more empathetic toward your loved ones, or more alert to the trove of possibilities and threats all around us, this book will show you how to see what matters most to you more clearly than ever before.

    Five years later, one is earning a good salary at a prestigious accounting firm. With no loans to repay, she lives in a fashionable apartment with her fiance. The other woman, saddled with burdensome debt and a low GPA, is still struggling to finish her degree in tourism. In an era of skyrocketing tuition and mounting concern over whether college is "worth it," Paying for the Party is an indispensable contribution to the dialogue assessing the state of American higher education. A powerful expose of unmet obligations and misplaced priorities, it explains in vivid detail why so many leave college with so little to show for it.Drawing on findings from a five-year interview study, Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton bring us to the campus of "MU," a flagship Midwestern public university, where we follow a group of women drawn into a culture of status seeking and sororities. Mapping different pathways available to MU students, the authors demonstrate that the most well-resourced and seductive route is a "party pathway" anchored in the Greek system and facilitated by the administration. This pathway exerts influence over the academic and social experiences of all students, and while it benefits the affluent and well-connected, Armstrong and Hamilton make clear how it seriously disadvantages the majority. Eye-opening and provocative, Paying for the Party reveals how outcomes can differ so dramatically for those whom universities enroll.

    To the Point. To Help High Performers Become Even More Productive Results are what matter the most to you. You want to be a reliable producer of value in your chosen domain: whether it’s your career, business, sports, studies, non-profit endeavors, or any other undertaking requiring intense focus. You’d like to learn how to become more productive, but your time is precious, and you don’t have time for a five-hundred-page book only to discover that you can summarize it with two sentences. If that’s you, Self-Disciplined Producer is for you. Written with high performers in mind, it’s a concise guide covering the most effective techniques to build self-control, improve your productivity and deliver consistent results day in, and day out. In about an hour and a half of reading you’ll discover: - a confusingly simple strategy of an American novelist and screenwriter that can help you overcome one habit that is most harming your productivity, - how distractions can make you more eager to get to work, - three strategies to ensure that you always finish what you started instead of leaving all your projects half-finished, - five strategies to embrace delayed gratification and become more patient with the process so that you won’t give up prematurely, - a fun mental exercise to help you identify the most important task and reduce time spent on less meaningful activities, - a principle developed in the 14th century by an English philosopher that can help you simplify your workday and become more productive, - a law humorously invented by a British naval historian that can help you perform your most important tasks in half the time usually needed to get them done, - six methods to recharge for higher productivity—because without a proper rest protocol you’ll be unlikely to ever operate at an optimal level. The author of Self-Disciplined Producer has been using these techniques to help him publish sixteen books, create four video courses with over 25,000 enrolled students in total, and translate his books into ten languages—all in the span of two years and a half. If you’re eager to learn how to double, triple, or even quadruple your productivity, don’t hesitate any longer. Invest an amount equivalent to what you pay for a cup of coffee, apply the teachings from this book to your workday and reap the benefits that might lead to thousandfold or higher returns.

    -Emest Hemingway In October 1984, the weak writing in a scientific report made national news. The report, which outlined safety procedures during a nuclear attack, advised industrial workers "to don heavy clothes and immerse themselves in a large body of water. " The logic behind this advice was sound: Water is a good absorber of heat, neutrons, and gamma rays. Unfortunately, the way the advice was worded was unclear. Was everyone supposed to be com- up for air? Be- pletely submerged? Was it safe to come sides being unclear, the writing conveyed the wrong im- pression to the public. The report came across as saying "go jump in a lake"-not the impression you want to give someone spending thousands of dollars to fund your re- search. Chances are that Dan Rather will not quote sentences from your documents on national television, no matter how weak the writing iso Still, your writing is important. On a personal level, your writing is the principal way in which people learn about your work. When you commu- nicate weIl, you receive credit for that work. When you do not communicate weIl or are too slow to communi- cate, the credit often go es to someone else. On a larger level, your writing and the writing of other scientists and vii viii Foreword engineers influenees publie poliey about scienee and en- gineering.

    That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us.” If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach them clearly—understanding how our own preconceptions lead us astray—statistics can point to ways we can live better and work smarter.As “perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world” (New Statesman), Tim Harford is an expert at taking complicated ideas and untangling them for millions of readers. In The Data Detective, he uses new research in science and psychology to set out ten strategies for using statistics to erase our biases and replace them with new ideas that use virtues like patience, curiosity, and good sense to better understand ourselves and the world. As a result, The Data Detective is a big-idea book about statistics and human behavior that is fresh, unexpected, and insightful.

    It can also be used by English speakers and is a practical, user-friendly book intended as a fast, do-it-yourself guide for those whose English language proficiency is above intermediate. The approach is based on material developed from teaching graduate students at Imperial College London and has been extensively piloted. The book guides the reader through the process of writing science research and will also help with writing a Master's or Doctoral thesis in English.Science writing is much easier than it looks because the structure and language are conventional. The aim of this book is to help the reader discover a template or model for science research writing and then to provide the grammar and vocabulary tools needed to operate that model. There are five units: Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussion/Conclusion and Abstract. The reader develops a model for each section of the research article through sample texts and exercises; this is followed by a Grammar and Writing Skills section designed to respond to frequently-asked questions as well as a Vocabulary list including examples of how the words and phrases are to be used.

    But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson's answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out the approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality.

    Be the leader who creates this environment. UnCommon Learning shows you how to transform a learning culture through sustainable and innovative initiatives. It moves straight to the heart of using innovations such as Makerspaces, Blended Learning and Microcredentials. Included in the book: Vignettes to illustrate key ideas Real life examples to show what works Graphs and data to prove initiatives’ impact

    For more than forty years, Bloom has transformed college students into lifelong readers with his unrivaled love for literature. Now, at a time when faster and easier electronic media threatens to eclipse the practice of reading, Bloom draws on his experience as critic, teacher, and prolific reader to plumb the great books for their sustaining wisdom. Shedding all polemic, Bloom addresses the solitary reader, who, he urges, should read for the purest of all reasons: to discover and augment the self. His ultimate faith in the restorative power of literature resonates on every page of this infinitely rewarding and important book.

    Questioning—deeply, imaginatively, "beautifully"—can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. So why are we often reluctant to ask "Why?"Berger's surprising findings reveal that even though children start out asking hundreds of questions a day, questioning "falls off a cliff" as kids enter school. In an education and business culture devised to reward rote answers over challenging inquiry, questioning isn't encouraged—and, in fact, is sometimes barely tolerated.And yet, as Berger shows, the most creative, successful people tend to be expert questioners. They've mastered the art of inquiry, raising questions no one else is asking—and finding powerful answers. The author takes us inside red-hot businesses like Google, Netflix, IDEO, and Airbnb to show how questioning is baked into their organizational DNA. He also shares inspiring stories of artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, basement tinkerers, and social activists who changed their lives and the world around them—by starting with a "beautiful question."Berger explores important questions, such as:- Why aren't we nurturing kids' natural ability to question—and what can parents and schools do about that?- Since questioning is a starting point for innovation, how might companies and business leaders begin to encourage and exploit it?- And most important, how can each of us re-ignite that questioning spark—and use inquiry as a powerful means to rethink and reinvent our lives?A More Beautiful Question outlines a practical Why / What If / How system of inquiry that can guide you through the process of innovative questioning—helping you find imaginative, powerful answers to your own "beautiful questions."