How Hansel and Gretel, Sherlock Holmes, the movie Groundhog Day, Harry Potter, and other familiar stories illustrate the concepts of computing.
Picture a computer scientist, staring at a screen and clicking away frantically on a keyboard, hacking into a system, or perhaps developing an app. Now delete that picture. In Once Upon an Algorithm, Martin Erwig explains computation as something that takes place beyond electronic computers, and computer science as the study of systematic problem solving. Erwig points out that many daily activities involve problem solving. Getting up in the morning, for example: You get up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast. This simple daily routine solves a recurring problem through a series of well-defined steps. In computer science, such a routine is called an algorithm.
Erwig illustrates a series of concepts in computing with examples from daily life and familiar stories. Hansel and Gretel, for example, execute an algorithm to get home from the forest. The movie Groundhog Day illustrates the problem of unsolvability; Sherlock Holmes manipulates data structures when solving a crime; the magic in Harry Potter's world is understood through types and abstraction; and Indiana Jones demonstrates the complexity of searching. Along the way, Erwig also discusses representations and different ways to organize data; "intractable" problems; language, syntax, and ambiguity; control structures, loops, and the halting problem; different forms of recursion; and rules for finding errors in algorithms.
This engaging book explains computation accessibly and shows its relevance to daily life. Something to think about next time we execute the algorithm of getting up in the morning.
The Art of Appraisal saves time and boosts performance with effective tools and a streamlined process. With a few detailed comments, an appraisal can correct weak habits, boost midlevel professionals, and launch excellent teachers into greatness. The Art of Appraisal allows administrators to reap the greatest benefits by creating clarity and efficiency in the process.
First, a binary feedback structure ruled by four performance tiers is described. Then, ten key areas of teacher responsibility are defined. Each task is further parsed into four subcategories. Evaluations become faster and easier, and the feedback becomes exponentially more profound.
Rich with real-world examples and comments about different performance ratings, The Art of Appraisal clarifies and distills the evaluation process. Supplemental chapters are packed with practical comments that can be pasted into evaluations. This structured, step-by-step system was developed by Dr. Culp, an educational professional with over forty years of experience.
An invaluable tool for administrators and the teachers they evaluate, The Art of Appraisal allows a school’s most effective tool to be used in the most efficient manner.
Teachers of all grade levels are increasingly moving into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) instruction, but time constraints and heavy workloads can make the transition difficult. In 20 Strategies for STEM Instruction, author William N. Bender, Ph.D., provides customizable, step-by-step guidelines for various teaching strategies that have been shown to strengthen STEM instruction.
Exploring the latest STEM instructional trends and specific teaching techniques, Bender highlights research evidence throughout the book and offers practical advice to help teachers:
Facilitate efficiency of study, making the most of instructional time
Integrate project-based learning with STEM instruction
Modify and adapt STEM strategies to meet the needs of each learner
Use engineering design principals to focus on real-world problems
Emphasize teamwork and collaboration around rigorous math and science content
Fully updated to reflect DSM-5 and current assessment tools, procedures and research, this award-winning book provides a practical and scientifically-based approach to identifying, assessing, and treating children and adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in school settings. Integrating current research evidence with theory and best-practice, the book will supports school-based professionals in a number of key areas including:
screening and assessing children and youth on the autism spectrum
identifying evidence-based interventions and practices
developing and implementing comprehensive educational programs
providing family support and accessing community resources
promoting special needs advocacy
Illustrative case examples, a glossary of terms and helpful checklists and forms make this the definitive resource for identifying and implementing interventions for children and youth with ASD.
This volume provides an up-to-date view of the status of the field that will guide practitioners in the selection, use, and interpretation of evidence-based assessment tools and intervention strategies for students with ASD. Each chapter features a consolidated and integrative description of best practice assessment and intervention/treatment approaches for children and youth with ASD. It brings the topics of assessment and intervention together in a single authoritative resource guide consistent with recent advances in evidence-based practice.
This Guide is intended to meet the needs of school-based professionals such as school psychologists, counselors, speech/language pathologists, occupational therapists, counselors, social workers, administrators, and both general and special education teachers. Parents, advocates, and community-based professionals will also find this guide a valuable and informative resource.
To reach true academic rigor, learners need high levels of both cognitive complexity and student autonomy. Moving them in this direction, however, requires teachers to become skilled at using research-based strategies to make the critical instructional shifts that deepen student learning. The Essentials for Achieving Rigor model of instruction and corresponding series of books were developed to help teachers provide that caliber of truly rigorous instruction.
This guide, developed by authors of the Essentials series, brings it all together. Carla Moore, Michael D. Toth, and Robert J. Marzano provide valuable tips and guidance to help teachers leverage essential strategies to:
Conduct standards-based planning and instruction
Establish conditions for learning and criteria for success
Use formative assessment data to make decisions
Practice strategies in a unified system of instruction
This user-friendly book provides a step-by-step guide to using the five major approaches to research design: quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and community-based participatory research. Chapters on each approach follow a unique format--they present a template for a research proposal and explain in detail how to conceptualize and fill in every section. Terminology commonly used within each approach is identified, and key moments of ethical decision making are flagged. Interdisciplinary research examples draw on current events and social justice topics. Unique coverage includes hot topics: replication studies and data sharing, tailoring proposals to different audiences, and more. The book also includes a general introduction to social research; an in-depth, practical discussion of ethics; and a chapter on how to begin a research study, from planning a topic to developing a research question via a literature review.
Special education in the United State is based on the concept of access—public schools are open to all children. But access is no longer a sufficient foundation. Approaches and accommodations that lead to academic success are increasingly demanded for those with learning disabilities. Functional, independent-living, and employable skills are requisite, but rare, for those with serious handicapping conditions. Since the last reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Act, four events have transpired that will have a dramatic impact on the next iteration of the federal law: the increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism, the rise of applied behavior analysis, the birth of social media, and the reality of unbundling. In How Autism Is Reshaping Special Education: The Unbundling of IDEA, Claypool and McLaughlin explore the effect of these events on a special education process burdened by regulation, where advances in the behavioral sciences and neurosciences blur the lines between education and medicine, and where social media fosters aggressive advocacy for specific disabilities.
Essential Knowledge for Teachers keeps teachers focused and relevant in today’s changing educational landscape. Training and development makes every teacher an instructional specialist. They engage students with their lessons, and they plan activities that maximize academic success. Equally important is the teacher’s role as guide. They set high expectations, assume that everyone can advance, and don’t allow underachievers to fall behind. And because teamwork is a must, they involve parents, peers, and the larger community.
The first section, “Wisdom for Your Community,” helps teachers engage students, involve parents, collaborate with colleagues, and present their schools and themselves as capable and professional. “Wisdom for Your Classroom” enhances the student-teacher relationship, and covers administrative details and classroom learning. “Wisdom for Yourself” focuses on teachers and their careers.
Short entries present one piece of wisdom, its benefits, and an example of the wisdom in action based on studies, real-world anecdotes, and Dr. Culp’s opinions. Recommendations can be implemented in easy and inexpensive ways. Become a guide, mentor and role model with Words of Wisdom for Teachers.
Marx's Sophistries, a revision of the author's earlier Why Marx Was Wrong, dissects the logic of Das Kapital, Karl Marx's central indictment of market economies and capitalist societies. It pronounces Marx's logic in that tome a sham of a particularly convoluted and impenetrable kind. His opaque language, his eccentric approach to "science," and his abstruse metaphysical arguments produce a text that is portentous and impressive-sounding, while being ambiguous and nearly incomprehensible. Marx's Sophistries seeks to identify the non sequiturs and logical fallacies by which Marx constructs his argument. Step by step and point by point, it challenges the assumptions and deductions by which Marx reaches his main conclusion: that capitalism is corrupt in its essential nature, and that capitalists gain wealth not by any legitimate means, but by appropriating unpaid "surplus value" from the working masses.
Bringing together interdisciplinary leaders in methodology and arts-based research (ABR), this comprehensive handbook explores the synergies between artistic and research practices and addresses issues in designing, implementing, evaluating, and publishing ABR studies. Coverage includes the full range of ABR genres, including those based in literature (such as narrative and poetic inquiry); performance (music, dance, playbuilding); visual arts (drawing and painting, collage, installation art, comics); and audiovisual and multimethod approaches. Each genre is described in detail and brought to life with robust research examples. Team approaches, ethics, and public scholarship are discussed, as are innovative ways that ABR is used within creative arts therapies, psychology, education, sociology, health sciences, business, and other disciplines. The companion website includes selected figures from the book in full color, additional online-only figures, and links to online videos of performance pieces.
Privilege Through the Looking-Glass is a collection of original essays that explore privilege and status characteristics in daily life. This collection seeks to make visible that which is often invisible. It seeks to sensitize us to things we have been taught not to see. Privilege, power, oppression, and domination operate in complex and insidious ways, impacting groups and individuals. And yet, these forces that affect our lives so deeply seem to at once operate in plain sight and lurk in the shadows, making them difficult to discern. Like water to a fish, environments are nearly impossible to perceive when we are immersed in them. This book attempts to expose our environments. With engaging and powerful writing, the contributors share their personal stories as a means of connecting the personal and the public. This volume applies an intersectional perspective to explore how race, class, gender, sexuality, education, and ableness converge, creating the basis for privilege and oppression. Privilege Through the Looking-Glass encourages readers to engage in self and social reflection, and can be used in a range of courses in sociology, social work, communication, education, gender studies, and African American studies. Each chapter includes discussion questions and/or activities for further engagement.
