Motivated Minds--a practical guide to ensuring your child's success in school. What makes students succeed in school? For the past twenty years, the focus has been on building children's self-esteem to help them achieve more in the classroom. But positive reinforcement hasn't necessarily resulted in measureable academic improvement. Through extensive research, combined with ongoing classroom implementation of their ideas, Deborah Stipek, Dean of the School of Education at Stanford, and Kathy Seal have created a program that will encourage motivation and a love of learning in children from toddlerhood through elementary school. Stipek and Seal maintain that parents and teachers can build a solid foundation for learning by helping children to develop the key elements of success: competency, autonomy, curiosity, and critical relationships. The authors offer both practical advice and strategies on understanding different learning styles for Math and reading as well as down-to-earth tips about how to manage difficult issues -- competition, grades, praise, bribes, and rewards -- that inevitably arise for parents and teachers. Most important, Stipek and Seal help parents create an enriching environment for their children at home that will mesh with the school experience and become a positive, effective climate for learning.

Would you like to establish an animated classroom atmosphere where students are motivated to gain skills, absorb knowledge, express opinions, and examine alternatives? Would you like your students to reflect on the quality of their thinking and learning? With her usual eloquence, Elisheva Zeffren articulates students’ need to think critically, formulate conclusions, and uncover what is relevant and important to modern life. The lucid writing style, easy-to-read charts, creative exercises, practical and concrete goals, make this book simple to revisit. Educators can take the innovative ideas back to their classrooms and implement them with little or no preparation.

To all those who stand tall through it all! This one's for ya'll.In life there's a start and finish to everything, but what counts the most are the things one does while going through it, such as having morals and principles that detour even the thought of indulging in activities that put your beliefs at question. I'm a firm believer in the Game God and the rules and codes of the "jungle" we call the streets, and when one violates the Laws of the Game, there will be various forms of consequences and repercussions. Times have changed true indeed, but what hasn't changed is the definition and understanding of what defines a man, a stand up man at that. There once was a time when men carried their own weight, no matter what threats or tactics law enforcement used on them; but due to all the real thoroughbred soldiers and their lengthily prison bits, the younger generation hasn't been receiving the guidance and discipline us true soldiers had to endure. So in turn, many are bred to be something all real men despise-rats and snitches.With all this being said, the Game hasn't changed, it's the individual who's playing that has changed, along with the help of the government who is guiding and molding them to their specifications to be less than the strong men their meant to be. They're not only the worst of the worst, they're lost.So to all the real "G's" who refuse to bend or fold, my hat's off to you because believe it when I tell you-we're the last of a dying breed.

The future of mankind is in jeopardy. Scientists who monitor the sun have discovered that it is unexpectedly growing warmer and emitting more dangerous ultraviolet rays. One man, a young, brilliant entrepreneur has a vision and the resources to do something about it. For those who believe, it will be a journey that will take them to realms beyond Earth and deep within their soul. In a race against time, often going against popular trends, the people of Genisova come together to create hope for the survival of humanity. Along the way, some incredible discoveries are made that may just show the true potential of humans.

Six essays by artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky on how education can foster inventiveness, paired with commentary by Minsky's former colleagues and students. Marvin Minsky was a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence whose work led to both theoretical and practical advances. His work was motivated not only by technological advancement but also by the desire to understand the workings of our own minds. Minsky's insights about the mind provide fresh perspectives on education and how children learn. This book collects for the first time six essays by Minsky on children, learning, and the potential of computers in school to enrich children's development. In these essays Minsky discusses the shortcomings of conventional education (particularly in mathematics) and considers alternative approaches; reflects on the role of mentors; describes higher-level strategies for thinking across domains; and suggests projects for children to pursue. Each essay is paired with commentary by one of Minsky's former colleagues or students, which identifies Minsky's key ideas and connects his writings to current research. Minsky once observed that in traditional teaching, “instead of promoting inventiveness, we focus on preventing mistakes.” These essays offer Minsky's unique insights into how education can foster inventiveness. Commentary by Hal Abelson, Walter Bender, Alan Kay, Margaret Minsky, Brian Silverman, Gary Stager, Mike Travers, Patrick Henry Winston

In Adapted Brains and Imaginary Worlds, Donald Beecher explores the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of the brain as they affect the study of fiction. He builds upon insights from the cognitive sciences to explain how we actualize imaginary persons, read the clues to their intentional states, assess their representations of selfhood, and empathize with their felt experiences in imaginary environments. He considers how our own faculty of memory, in all its selective particularity and planned oblivion, becomes an increasingly significant dimension of the critical act, and how our own emotions become aggressive readers of literary experience, culminating in states which define the genres of literature. Beecher illustrates his points with examples from major works of the Renaissance period, including Dr Faustus, The Faerie Queene, Measure for Measure, The Yorkshire Tragedy, Menaphon, The Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolphus, and The Moral Philosophy of Doni. In this volume, studies in the science of mind come into their own in explaining the architectures of the brain that shape such emergent properties as empathy, suspense, curiosity, the formation of communities, gossip, rationalization, confabulation, and so much more that pertains to the behaviour of characters, the orientation of readers, and the construction of meaning. Discussing a breadth of topics – from the mysteries of the criminal mind to the psychology of tears – Adapted Brains and Imaginary Worlds is the most comprehensive work available on the study of fictional worlds and their relation to the constitution of the human brain.