WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency


Micah L. Sifry - 2011
    Now we are told a small, international band of renegades armed with nothing more than laptops presents the greatest threat to the U.S. regime since the close of the Cold War. WikiLeaks’ release of a massive trove of secret official documents has riled politicians from across the spectrum. Even noted free-speech advocate Floyd Abrams blames WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for the certain defeat of federal shield-law legislation protecting journalists. Hyperbole, hysteria? Certainly. Welcome to the Age of Transparency.But political analyst and writer Micah Sifry argues that WikiLeaks is not the whole story: It is a symptom, an indicator of an ongoing generational and philosophical struggle between older, closed systems, and the new open culture of the Internet. Despite Assange’s arrest, the publication of secret documents continues. As Sifry shows, this is part of a larger movement for greater governmental and corporate transparency: “When you combine connectivity with transparency—the ability for more people to see, share and shape what is going on around them—the result is a huge increase in social energy, which is being channeled in all kinds of directions.”

Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data


Charles Wheelan - 2012
    How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more.For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions.And in Wheelan’s trademark style, there’s not a dull page in sight. You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game show Let’s Make a Deal—and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a bestseller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.

We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News


Eliot Higgins - 2021
    Soon, the identity of one of the suspects was revealed: he was a Russian spy. This huge investigative coup wasn't pulled off by an intelligence agency or a traditional news outlet. Instead, the scoop came from Bellingcat, the open-source investigative team that is redefining the way we think about news, politics, and the digital future.We Are Bellingcat tells the inspiring story of how a college dropout pioneered a new category of reporting and galvanized citizen journalists-working together from their computer screens around the globe-to crack major cases, at a time when fact-based journalism is under assault from authoritarian forces. Founder Eliot Higgins introduces readers to the tools Bellingcat investigators use, tools available to anyone, from software that helps you pinpoint the location of an image, to an app that can nail down the time that photo was taken. This book digs deep into some of Bellingcat's most important investigations-the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine, Assad's use of chemical weapons in Syria, the identities of alt-right protestors in Charlottesville-with the drama and gripping detail of a spy novel.

The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age


Catherine Steiner-Adair - 2013
    Easy access to the Internet and social media has erased the boundaries that protect childhood from the unsavory aspects of adult life. Parents, too, are immersed in the digital world far more deeply than they realize. Whether they are incessantly chatting or texting on their smartphones, or working in front of their computer screens, they are increasingly missing in action from their children's lives. Meanwhile, kids long for more meaningful relationships not only with each other but with the grown-ups in their lives.The benefits of having infinite information at our fingertips are extraordinary, and we are connected more than ever, but as the focus of family has turned to the glow of the screen and quick-twitch communications, parents often feel they are losing control of family life, and worse, the means for meaningful connection with the children they love. As clinical psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair shows, these chronic distractions can have deep and lasting effects. Children don't need adults constantly, but they do need parents to provide what tech cannot: close, meaningful interactions with family and friends. Drawing on real-life stories from her clinical and consulting work, Steiner-Adair offers insight and advice that can help parents achieve greater understanding, authority, and confidence as they come up against the tech revolution unfolding in their living rooms. With fresh eyes, an open mind and the will to act on what we see and learn, Steiner-Adair argues, we have the opportunity now to nourish our families and protect and prepare our children for meaningful life in a digital age that is here to stay.

Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement


Lucy Calkins - 2012
    The goal is clear. The pathway is not. -Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman The Common Core is written, but the plan for implementing the Common Core is not.Lucy Calkins and her colleagues at the Reading and Writing Project have helped thousands of educators design their own pathways to the Common Core. Now, with Pathways to the Common Core, they are ready to help you find your way.Designed for teachers, school leaders, and professional learning communities looking to navigate the gap between their current literacy practices and the ideals of the Common Core, Pathways to the Common Core will help you: * understand what the standards say, suggest, and what they don't say; * recognize the guiding principles that underpin the reading and writing standards; * identify how the Common Core's infrastructure supports a spiraling K-12 literacy curriculum; and * scrutinize the context in which the CCSS were written and are being unrolled.In addition to offering an analytical study of the standards, this guide will also help you and your colleagues implement the standards in ways that lift the level of teaching and learning throughout your school. Specifically, it will help you: * become a more critical consumer of the standards-based mandates that are flooding your desk; * craft instruction that supports students in reading more complex texts, developing higher level comprehension skills, and writing at the ambitious levels of the CCSS; * develop performance assessments and other tools to propel Common Core reforms; and * create systems of continuous improvement that are transparent, collegial, and accountable.Above all, this book will help you interpret the Common Core as a rallying cry that ignites deep, wide and lasting reforms and, most importantly, accelerates student achievement.For more information, visit UnitsofStudy.com.

No More Summer-Reading Loss


Carrie Cahill - 2013
    Kids take a vacation from books and those with limited access to books lose ground to their peers. You may have thought there's nothing you can do about it, but there is. No More Summer-Reading Loss shows how to ensure that readers continue to grow year round.School-based practitioners Carrie Cahill and Kathy Horvath join with renowned researchers Anne McGill-Franzen and Dick Allington to help you make summer readers out of every student. You'll stop summer-reading loss as they help you:identify practices that inadvertently contribute to it understand the research on its implications and its prevention take research-based action with 8 instructional strategies. Building independence. Keeping kids on grade-level. Closing the achievement gap. These are just a few of the valuable outcomes that No More Summer-Reading Loss can support. Most importantly, it will help you pass on a love of reading that knows no season and gives readers confidence when they return in the fall. About the Not This, But That Series No More Summer-Reading Loss is part of the Not This, But That series, edited by Nell K. Duke and Ellin Oliver Keene. It helps teachers examine common, ineffective classroom practices and replace them with practices supported by research and professional wisdom. In each book a practicing educator and an education researcher identify an ineffective practice; summarize what the research suggests about why; and detail research-based, proven practices to replace it and improve student learning. Read a sample chapter from No More Summer-Reading Loss.

How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School


John D. Bransford - 1998
    This book offers exciting -- and useful -- information about the mind and the brain that provides some answers on how people actually learn.

The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money


Bryan Caplan - 2018
    In this explosive book, Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity—in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As and casually forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for the average worker but instead in runaway credential inflation, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely if ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy.Caplan draws on the latest social science to show how the labor market values grades over knowledge, and why the more education your rivals have, the more you need to impress employers. He explains why graduation is our society's top conformity signal, and why even the most useless degrees can certify employability. He advocates two major policy responses. The first is educational austerity. Government needs to sharply cut education funding to curb this wasteful rat race. The second is more vocational education, because practical skills are more socially valuable than teaching students how to outshine their peers.Romantic notions about education being "good for the soul" must yield to careful research and common sense — The Case against Education points the way.

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us


Dan Lyons - 2018
    Why did work become so miserable? Who is responsible? And does any company have a model for doing it right?For two years, Lyons ventured in search of answers. From the innovation-crazed headquarters of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, to a cult-like "Holocracy" workshop in San Francisco, and to corporate trainers who specialize in ... Legos, Lyons immersed himself in the often half-baked and frequently lucrative world of what passes for management science today. He shows how new tools, workplace practices, and business models championed by tech's empathy-impaired power brokers have shattered the social contract that once existed between companies and their employees. These dystopian beliefs--often masked by pithy slogans like "We're a Team, Not a Family"--have dire consequences: millions of workers who are subject to constant change, dehumanizing technologies--even health risks. A few companies, however, get it right. With Lab Rats, Lyons makes a passionate plea for business leaders to understand this dangerous transformation, showing how profit and happy employees can indeed coexist.

The Craft of Research


Wayne C. Booth - 1995
    Seasoned researchers and educators Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams present an updated third edition of their classic handbook, whose first and second editions were written in collaboration with the late Wayne C. Booth. The Craft of Research explains how to build an argument that motivates readers to accept a claim; how to anticipate the reservations of readers and to respond to them appropriately; and how to create introductions and conclusions that answer that most demanding question, “So what?” The third edition includes an expanded discussion of the essential early stages of a research task: planning and drafting a paper. The authors have revised and fully updated their section on electronic research, emphasizing the need to distinguish between trustworthy sources (such as those found in libraries) and less reliable sources found with a quick Web search. A chapter on warrants has also been thoroughly reviewed to make this difficult subject easier for researchers Throughout, the authors have preserved the amiable tone, the reliable voice, and the sense of directness that have made this book indispensable for anyone undertaking a research project.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies


Erik Brynjolfsson - 2014
    Digital technologies—with hardware, software, and networks at their core—will in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors can, apply enormous data sets to transform retailing, and accomplish many tasks once considered uniquely human.In The Second Machine Age MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee—two thinkers at the forefront of their field—reveal the forces driving the reinvention of our lives and our economy. As the full impact of digital technologies is felt, we will realize immense bounty in the form of dazzling personal technology, advanced infrastructure, and near-boundless access to the cultural items that enrich our lives.Amid this bounty will also be wrenching change. Professions of all kinds—from lawyers to truck drivers—will be forever upended. Companies will be forced to transform or die. Recent economic indicators reflect this shift: fewer people are working, and wages are falling even as productivity and profits soar.Drawing on years of research and up-to-the-minute trends, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies for survival and offer a new path to prosperity. These include revamping education so that it prepares people for the next economy instead of the last one, designing new collaborations that pair brute processing power with human ingenuity, and embracing policies that make sense in a radically transformed landscape.A fundamentally optimistic book, The Second Machine Age alters how we think about issues of technological, societal, and economic progress.

Developing and Maintaining Practical Archives: A How-To-Do-It Manual


Gregory S. Hunter - 1996
    This new edition has been completely updated ad expanded to include crucial new information on digital records, encoded arcival description (EAD), copyright issues, post-9/11 security concerns, international perspectives on tuse issues--content that makes this manual essential for archivists of all backgrounds. Setting up archives, appraisal and accessioning, acquisition strategies and policies, arrangement description, reference and access, preservation, and electronic records are just some of the topics covered in both theory and practice in this clear, comprehensive, ad practial guide.

Facebook: The Inside Story


Steven Levy - 2020
    And now renowned tech writer Steven Levy delivers the definitive history of one of America's most powerful and controversial companies: Facebook.In his sophomore year of college, Mark Zuckerberg created a simple website to serve as a campus social network. The site caught on like wildfire, and soon students nationwide were on Facebook.Today, Facebook is nearly unrecognizable from Zuckerberg's first, modest iteration. It has grown into a tech giant, the largest social media platform and one of the most gargantuan companies in the world, with a valuation of more than $576 billion and almost 3 billion users, including those on its fully owned subsidiaries, Instagram and WhatsApp. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook in American daily life. And in light of recent controversies surrounding election-influencing "fake news" accounts, the handling of its users' personal data, and growing discontent with the actions of its founder and CEO, never has the company been more central to the national conversation.Based on hundreds of interviews inside and outside the company, Levy's sweeping narrative digs deep into the whole story of the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure


Jonathan Haidt - 2018
    These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures who must be protected and supervised by adults. But despite the good intentions of the adults who impart them, the Great Untruths are harming kids by teaching them the opposite of ancient wisdom and the opposite of modern psychological findings on grit, growth, and antifragility. The result is rising rates of depression and anxiety, along with endless stories of college campuses torn apart by moralistic divisions and mutual recriminations. This is a book about how we got here. First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt take us on a tour of the social trends stretching back to the 1980s that have produced the confusion and conflict on campus today, including the loss of unsupervised play time and the birth of social media, all during a time of rising political polarization. This is a book about how to fix the mess. The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life, with devastating consequences for them, for their parents, for the companies that will soon hire them, and for a democracy that is already pushed to the brink of violence over its growing political divisions. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines.

Finding the Heart of Nonfiction: Teaching 7 Essential Craft Tools with Mentor Texts


Georgia Heard - 2013
    Georgia HeardHumanity and warmth are the cornerstones of quality nonfiction writing. But how can students create them in genres that at first seem more informational than intimate? In Finding the Heart of Nonfiction, Georgia Heard shows how mentor texts can help students read for seven essential craft tools and then use them to create inviting nonfiction that keeps readers' interest.Lyrical and practical, Finding the Heart of Nonfiction describes how to choose mentor texts, use them, and mine them for exemplary instruction. Between these suggestions and the instructional ideas, Georgia shows how students can write nonfiction that informs and inspires. You'll find thoughtful, immediately useful support as you:introduce nonfiction with her handpicked, reproducible mentor texts get students writing with the instructional ideas in Georgia's Try This sections familiarize writers with nonfiction craft and text features connect nonfiction work to the Common Core State Standards collect mentor texts tailored to your students. My hope, writes Georgia, is that you and your students will be inspired by the mentor texts I've chosen-but also inspired to seek out your own mentor texts and continue to explore the world through nonfiction. Trust Finding the Heart of Nonfiction and help your students write with purpose, voice, and passion.Preview the book. Download and read a sample chapter.