Archive for the ‘Education Books’ Category

Wise Guy: Lessons From a Life by Guy Kawasaki

Tuesday, March 12th, 2019

Wise Guy: Lessons From a Life by Guy Kawasaki uses his unique experience with Apple and other tech companies along with his life beyond work to distill wisdom he has gathered to date. His stories are engaging and this book can save you a lot of pain as you strive to be a better leader and a better person. It may well help you have a happier life. As a devoted parent, he has created a valuable book for parents. I strongly recommend it.

Preface

Rather than an autobiography or a memoir, this book is a compilation of the most enlightening stories of Guy’s life. It’s lessons, not history. Perhaps Guy’s stories can help you live a more joyous, productive, and meaningful life. If Wise Guy succeeds, that will be a pretty good story.

1. Immigration

Guy’s great-grandparents from his father’s side emigrated from Hiroshima, Japan to Hawaii to avoid military service during the Russo-Japanese War. They worked on farms for $1 a day. Guy’s maternal grandfather also immigrated from Japan where he met his wife. Guy got his name from Guy Lombardo, a famous bandleader from Canada who his father knew. While his parents didn’t go to college they read a lot and were very fond of music. After three tries his father was elected to the state senate where he served twenty years.
Guy grew up in a poor section of Honolulu. His neighborhood was a melting pot at the time, but Japanese-Hawaiians were looked down on. His parents worked hard and placed a high value on education. Guy believes that by living in America, he was able to accomplish a great deal more than if he grew up in Japan, which wasn’t likely in Hiroshima. The wisdom here is to change a losing game or one that is going nowhere. This might require moving like Guy’s family did.

2. Education

Guy believes that education is the great catalyst and equalizer. He credits his sixth-grade teacher for telling his parents that he shouldn’t take the typical path through Hawaii’s public schools. This meant great personal financial sacrifice for his parents. Guy found that his best teachers were also the toughest in that they always had high expectations. The advice here is to seek out people who will challenge you. If you are a teacher or the boss, you aren’t doing any favors by lowering your standards. The future cost of short-term kindness is great.
Guy suggests that you also teach respect for authority and avoid trying to overprotect children. Sometimes being scared can teach an important lesson. Kids should know that people aren’t good or bad. Most of us have done good and bad things. Life offers a lot of contradictions. When it came time to go to college Guy wanted to go to Occidental where he could play football. His father told him no and that if he was going to pay for college Guy was going to Stanford. Guy got into Stanford even though his grades and SATs were not so great because at the time his Asian heritage made him a desirable minority. Guy recommends going away to college so you can meet people from different backgrounds.

3. Inspiration

Guy was motivated to work hard so he could afford a nice car. He believes that it doesn’t matter what motivates you as long as you are motivated. He also recommends If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence, and Spirit by Brenda Ueland for inspiration even if your goal is to do something other than writing. After getting robbed twice in high school Guy vowed to work hard so he could avoid public transportation and high crime neighborhoods.
When he told his father that a passerby thought he was a gardener because he looked Japanese his father told him to get over it. Don’t look for insults and don’t let other people get to you. Condoleezza Rice told him “don’t ever see yourself as a victim because then you will start acting like one.” You must believe that you control your own fate. Be sure to read Mindset by Carol Dweck. You can do some unbelievable things, but you have to use the right tool. It’s ok to quit something as long as you reboot and restart. This chapter ends with the text of the speech he gave to the graduates at Menlo College in 2012. It’s full of good advice.

4. Apple

Guy worked at Apple from 1983 to 1987 and from 1995 to 1997. These two “tours of duty” made him what he is today. When he first saw MacWrite and MacPaint he was dumbfounded by how cool the Macintosh was. His job was to convince software companies to produce products for the Mac. He was an evangelist. Guy felt that the cool aspect of the Mac made his job easy, but he worked hard and was smart enough to succeed. There are no perfect candidates for a job, only successful candidates who make their shortcomings irrelevant. A lot of people get jobs because they know someone. Don’t worry about that, just deliver.
Working for Steve Jobs required that you prove yourself every day. He demanded excellence and kept you at the top of your game. It was sometimes unpleasant and always scary, but it drove you to do your finest work. Steve demanded honesty and saw it as a test of competence and character. It’s also easier than lying. Trust but document. It’s good to cover your ass when you are bending the rules. Guy recommends Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink. Pay and perks are nice but look for a job where you can learn new skills, and work autonomously towards a meaningful goal. This chapter concludes with the top eleven lessons Guy learned at Apple.

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Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson

Monday, February 27th, 2017

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson explores how our search for novel experiences and fun has driven many commercial and scientific aftershocks. The process of feeding our senses with pleasure lead to opening up world trade and it had the downside of feeding the slave trade and exploitation. The next time you think slacking off is a waste of time, you just might be in the process of innovation.

1. Introduction

This book is a history of what we do for fun and how having fun has had a great impact on everything else. One measure of human progress is how much recreational time we have, and the immensely varied ways we have of enjoying it. We see that innovation in one field often sets in motion transformations in other fields, and it’s experiences designed to delight or amaze that often end up transforming society in dramatic ways. Play is often about breaking rules and experimenting with new conventions. Is such, it is often the seedbed for innovations.
While necessity may be the mother of invention, leisure and play are often involved as well. The pursuit of pleasure also stitches together a global fabric of shared culture. The quest for delight, however, has not always transformed things for the better.

2. Fashion and Shopping

Start with the story of a purple die from a sea snail. In man’s quest to find more of these snails, the Phoenicians ventured beyond the Mediterranean and unlocked the Atlantic for all time. No one needs the color purple. It just looks nice. As soon as humans became tool makers, they started making jewelry. Since delightful things are valuable, they attract commercial speculation, which funds new technologies, markets, and geographical exploration. The human appetite for surprise, novelty, and beauty dominates in human cultures.
As people in Europe developed a taste for fine clothing, cotton from the Americas came in demand. To meet this demand, the slave trade boomed and by 1860, half of population of southern states were slaves. Child labor abuse also resulted along with pollution from factories. This also lead to the creation of department stores in the late 1800s where people often went just to shop. Crime among women increased due to shop lifting. More women entered the work force and many were department store clerks. By the 1950s, malls were springing up. They exaggerated suburban sprawl and foreshadowed decline of the inner cities. This chapter ends with a plea to design and build new types of cities.

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World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Learners by Youg Zhao

Thursday, August 16th, 2012

World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Learners by Yong Zhao (© 2012, Corwin: Thousand Oaks, CA) provides a vision of what schools should look like. He draws on examples for what real innovative schools are currently doing to help make his case. Every educator and parent should read this and do what they can to help realize this vision. As you read my summary, please consider clicking on the icon at the bottom of each page to purchase your copy from Amazon.

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Wounded by School – Put joy back in learning. Kirsten Olson

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture, is a must read for all educators. In this book, Kirsten Olson draws on her extensive research to help us understand the types of wounds suffered by students in school. The second part helps us understand how students can heal and how to avoid wounds altogether. If all teachers read and acted on this advice, schools would be better places overnight. Parents of wounded students and students themselves should also get this book.

Click here to see my summary of Wounded by School.

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You Just Don’t Understand – Improve Communication Deborah Tannen

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen is a must for anyone who can identify with either gender. If you want to improve your ability to communicate with members of the opposite sex, get this book. Tannen draws on her considerable research and that of many others in the field to explain the differences in how women and men communicate. While my summary hits the main points, the details I left out are fascinating.

Click here to see my summary of You Just Don’t Understand.

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You’ve Gotta Connect: Building Relationships that Lead to Engaged Students, Productive Classrooms, and Higher Achievement by James Alan Sturtevant

Monday, January 26th, 2015

You’ve Gotta Connect: Building Relationships that Lead to Engaged Students, Productive Classrooms, and Higher Achievement by James Alan Sturtevant makes the case that the most important thing teachers can do is connect with and accept their students. It may not always be easy, but once you do connect, students will behave better and learn more. This book is packed with great advice and belongs in every teachers professional development library. Click at the bottom on any page to purchase copies for teachers you know.

James Alan Sturtevant

James has worked as a high school social studies teacher since 1985. He see it as a wonderful activity but his job by no means defines him. Since the early 1990s he has taught at Big Walnut High School located in Sunbury, Ohio. He earned a BA in history and Political Science from Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio, and an MA in history from the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He has been married to Penny Sturtevant since 1991. Penny is the principal at Big Walnut Middle School. They have three children that they love dearly.

1. Commitment: Don’t Start Class Without It.

When a visiting professor asked him how he created such a wonderful atmosphere in his classroom, James gave it much thought and came up with the following. Connections have improved as his career has progressed. Connection is not automatic as he had to work at it. You don’t have to have his personality type to connect. You need to be willing to try new approaches and gauge their effectiveness. As a result of this pondering, this book was born.
To begin, you have to make a commitment to connect, even with students who have annoying attitudes. You also need to be prepared to work hard on connecting with some students. Humans need connection and when they connect, they are more likely to be happy and productive. Connected students will be more engaged in learning and more creative as well. They will retain more, have fewer behavior issues, feel better about themselves, get along with other students, achieve at higher levels, and not drop out. Keep in mind that you can care for a student and still have high expectations.
James suggests that you make a poster for yourself that contains what effective communication is and is not. (See page 22) In short, you need to be: available, caring, respectful, trustworthy, warn, welcoming, compassionate, loving, interested in students, a great listener, and accepting. What you shouldn’t do is: act like a peer, try too hard to be liked, gossip, have vague boundaries and expectations, be sarcastic, pamper students, be phony, demand respect rather than earn it, and pretend to care. Like the other chapters in this book, this one ends with a number of activities that you can do by yourself or with others to help internalize the key concepts.

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You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education by Sir Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica

Monday, May 21st, 2018

You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education by Sir Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica will help parents get the education their children need to live productive, fulfilled lives. If you or anyone you know has children in or approaching school, this is a must-read. Be sure to get a copy and perhaps some gift copies for parents you know. This is a sequel to Creative Schools. See my summary here.

1. Get Your Bearings

As a parent your worry list includes too much testing, a narrow curriculum, individual attention, learning problems, medication, possible bullying, college costs, and finding a good job. Schools also might not value a child’s strength as they magnify their weaknesses, and make grades so important that students lose a sense of self. Children love to learn and are natural learners. For most of human history, children educated themselves as they learned from others. With today’s focus on test scores, children are more likely to dislike learning as they become less healthy and more sedentary.

A focus on things like STEM is often done to the detriment of other subjects that are none the less important to our economy and society. Ken argues for ditching the acronyms. Current reforms have not budged achievement levels as they cause enormous stress and loss of enjoyment. Businesses want employees who are adaptable creative team players as the support reforms that suppress these very attributes. Vocational courses are also squeezed out as too many college graduates can’t find appropriate work.

2. Know Your Role

Regardless of your family structure, the adults in a child’s life are responsible for meeting a variety of needs. Here Ken uses Maslow’s hierarchy, which includes physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The final need means becoming meaningfully fulfilled as a person. As for esteem, children need praise, but it shouldn’t be endless and it should be tempered with constructive criticism. Children know when they have worked hard. Parents should set boundaries and provide moral education. Help them learn how to make decisions and to find a sense of direction and purpose. This shows why one-size-fits-all education is wrong.

Ken defines five parenting styles. It seems that the authoritative style is usually the best as it involves setting rules that can be justified to the child and the willingness to alter the rules it conditions permit. Students should be allowed to struggle at times so as to work to solve their own problems. Such rules are more like guidelines that are a work in progress, and they tend to produce the happiest children.

3. Know Your Child

Research indicates the one’s genes and one’s environment have about the same impact on what one becomes. This means that parents have about half of the responsibility. The culture surrounding a child has a huge impact. Usually, money has a big role as poverty brings with it a great deal of stress for many reasons. Poor kids are six times more likely to be neglected or abused, live in neighborhoods that are less safe, have lower birth weight, learning disabilities, and emotional and behavioral problems. There is no single definition of intelligence and each child’s potential needs to be unlocked if they are to be successful.

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Your Starter Guide to Maker Spaces by Nicholas Provenzano
Monday, December 3rd, 2018

Your Starter Guide to Maker Spaces by Nicholas Provenzano tell the story of how he started and built a successful maker space at his school. His guidelines explain what one is, who can help you build one, where it should go, and what to put in it. He explains how it can promote project-based learning and turn failure into a positive thing. Every school should have a copy.

Introduction

Since making doesn’t have a set curriculum, it should be no surprise that this book is written by an English teacher. The goal is to have students use different tools to demonstrate understanding. You don’t have to be an expert to turn your students lose and it’s ok to fail. This book features Nick’s experiences rather than a pile of research. He claims to be a tinkerer rather than an expert and hopes that you can draw on his work to help jump-start your own and the work of your students.

1. So, What is Making?

Nick’s definition of making is that it is the creation of something new that was not there before. By being broad and vague it is not constrained. This definition also makes it more inclusive so the everyone can make with anything you can find along with computer code. It is also vital that you ditch the idea that making is for STEM classes. You need to add the arts (STEAM) as the arts bring everything together. You want students to be creators, not just consumers.

Since some students don’t have a supportive making environment at home, schools need to provide one. They all need to experience problem-based lessons to prepare for life after school. Another key is that teachers have to see themselves as makers. At the least, they make lesson plans. They also make other things and need to be role models when it comes to making. There is also an element of storytelling as just about anything you make has a story associated with it.

2. I Know What Making Is, but Why Should I Care?

In many schools students don’t have much choice about what they do or study. A maker space gives them choice and freedom if they are making what they want. Creativity and innovation are also often eliminated from the curriculum. Not so in a maker space. You should also design your maker space to support collaboration. Businesses want all of these things and many schools don’t try to build them into students’ lives. Finally, a maker space should be a fun place for students to be. There is no reason why school can’t be more fun than it already is and maker spaces can help.

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Flip Your Classroom – Great Book Summary
Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Classroom Every Day by Jonathan Bergmann and Arron Sams (©2012, International Society for Technology in Education: Washington, D.C.) is a must read for anyone interested in flipping their classroom. It provides a window into a flipped classroom led by two educators who were driven by a simple question: What is best for the students in my classroom?” This book chronicles their journey from their first shaky steps at trying to flip their classrooms to their current best practice so far flipped-mastery classroom model. Learn from their mistakes so that you can make new mistakes, and then share what you’ve learned to improve the model for all. Learn how flipping produces better test results and better learning. Also learn how it will allow you to interact more often with your students and develop more personal relationships.

Jon Bergmann & Aaron Sams – Chemistry Teachers

Jon Bergmann is currently the Lead Technology Facilitator for the Joseph Sears School in Kenilworth, Illinois. He has a high school science teacher for 25 years. He received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching in 2002 and was named Semi-Finalist for the Colorado Teacher of the Year in 2010. He is the father of three teenagers and is happily married to the love of his life.

Aaron Sams holds a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry and a master of arts in education, both from Biola University. He is currently a classroom science teacher in Woodland Park, Colorado. He received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching in 2009 and co chaired the committee to revise the Colorado Science Academic Standards. He regularly turns off all his electronic devices to spend time with his wife and three children.
Don’t worry if you are not a chemistry teacher. The concepts here can apply just about anywhere.

The Saga Begins

For some students, the teacher talks to fast and they can’t keep up with note taking. Others miss classes due to sports, music, or illness. Some focus on a grading rubric and get good grades without a lot of understanding. These are some of the problems a flipped classroom can address.

The authors first recorded their lessons out of selfishness. They were spending inordinate amounts of time reteaching lessons to students who missed class, and the recorded lectures became their first line of defense. Student feedback was positive and even students who were in class were watching the online videos. Soon students and teachers in other schools around the world were using them too. When they realized that class time could be more effectively used to help students with concepts they didn’t understand, their flipped classroom was born. They used the same tests from the previous year and found that they students scored higher.

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My Best Eleven Book Summaries from 2013
Monday, December 30th, 2013

Since starting my blog in 2009, I have summarized 97 books. I do this to help you with purchase decisions, and to help people review the key concepts after they have read the book. Today I am posting links to my favorite summaries from 2013. My focus is education, but I find that there are many books from the world of business that offer great advice for educators, parents, and students. All 97 summaries are still available so dig in and be sure to purchase those that appeal. Thanks again for your wonderful support and Happy New Year.

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries by Peter Sims explains the qualities that set innovative people apart from the pack. He summarizes a great deal of research that makes his points convincing. While this is an ideal book for high school and college students, it’s never too late for adults to take advantage of these valuable lessons.

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants is Malcolm Gladwell’s fourth best selling book to be summarized here. I’ve been a big fan ever since I summarized The Tipping Point.

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina tells how what we know about brain science can be used to positively influence our daily lives. This book is vital for educators, policy makers, and anyone who wants to get more out of their gray matter.

Why Students Don’t Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. The focus here is how do students’ minds work, and how you can use this knowledge to be a better teacher.

Adapt: Why SUccess Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford offers an inspiring and innovative alternative to traditional top-down decision making. Tim deftly weaves together psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, physics, and economics along with compelling stories of hard won lessons from the real world. He makes a passionate case for the importance of adaptive trial and error to deal with problems both global, personal, and everything in between

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip & Dan Heath shares research and cool stories that show how our decisions are disrupted by an array of biases and irrationalities. They go on to introduce a four-step process designed to counteract these problems. Their fresh strategies and practical tools will enable you to make better choices at work and beyond. If you want to increase your chances of making the right decision at the right moment, this book is for you.

Bull Spotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation by Loren Collins will help you spot and avoid lies in a world with more accessible truth and lies than ever. Learn how to use the tools of critical thinking to identify the common features and trends of misinformation campaigns. Loren will help you tell the difference between real conspiracies and conspiracy theories, real science from pseudoscience, and history from fantasy. This is a book everyone needs to consider.

Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will by Dale J. Stephens is a handbook for people of any age who wants to take control of their own learning. Dale suggests actions you can take now and explores how school has failed almost everyone in some way. You will still need hard work and determination to thrive in the real world as this book offers an alternate approach to learning rather than an easy solution. Dale offers lots of valuable advice and many inspirational stories of success by unschoolers.

To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel Pink is a fresh look at the art and science of selling, which is something we all do. If you want to better understand others’ perspectives, make your message clearer and more persuasive, and much more, click below to purchase this book. It is purposeful and practical, and may change how you see the world as it transforms what you do at work, at school, and at home.

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson deals with the point where natural talent meets personal passion. Ken explores the conditions that lead us to live lives filled with passion, confidence, and personal achievement. The stories about people from a wide variety of fields entertain and inspire. The book is a classic.

The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills by Daniel Coyle is a bit over 100 pages and offers specific tips for developing talent. Daniel relies on abundant research to help you copy the techniques used by the top performers in many fields. In addition to growing your own talents, this book will help parents, educators, and coaches increase the success rate of their students. Every home should have a copy.

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