“Books are a Man’s Best Friend”, for the simple reason that books guide us and help us in the best possible way one can ever get.
Reading books help us widen our horizon and motivate us to explore new possibilities. Reading is must and a regular habit of those who are reaching heights today. Below is a list of some amazing books that you, as an educator must read this year.
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1. Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education by Ken Robinson
Ken Robinson is one of the world’s most influential voices in education, and his 2006 TED Talk on the subject is the most viewed in the organization’s history. Now, the internationally recognized leader on creativity and human potential focuses on one of the most critical issues of our time: how to transform the nation’s troubled educational system. At a time when standardized testing businesses are raking in huge profits, when many schools are struggling, and students and educators everywhere are suffering under the strain, Robinson points the way forward. He argues for an end to our outmoded industrial educational system and proposes a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today’s unprecedented technological and professional resources to engage all students, develop their love of learning, and enable them to face the real challenges of the twenty-first century.
2. UnCommon Learning by Eric C. Sheninger
The book will help you know more about integrating digital media and new applications with purpose and build a culture of learning with pleasure!
How can students use real-world tools to do real-world work and develop skills society demands. To 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. The book includes Vignettes to illustrate key ideas, Real life examples to show what works and Graphs and data to prove initiatives’ impact.
3. Creativity for Everybody by Kathryn P. Haydon & Jane Harvey
Creativity for Everybody provides a fast overview so that anyone can take hold of their creative thinking and support the creativity of others. In business, education, and our personal lives, we achieve innovation and progress through creative thinking. This innovative new book sets the stage for growth, and empowers you and those around you to use fresh thinking and problem solving at home, at school, and at work.
4. The Test: Why Our Schools are Obsessed with Standardised Testing–But You Don’t Have to Be by Anya Kamenetz
“Your child is more than a score. But in the era of No Child Left Behind and the Common Core, America’s schools are sacrificing learning in favor of testing. How do we preserve space for self-directed learning and development, especially when we still want all children to hit the mark?
The Test explores all sides of this problem—where these tests came from, their limitations and flaws, and ultimately what you as a parent, teacher, or concerned citizen can do. It recounts the shocking history and tempestuous politics of testing, and borrows strategies from fields as diverse as games, neuroscience, and ancient philosophy to help families cope.
5. College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education by Ryan Craig
Craig sees the future of higher education in online degrees that unbundle course offerings to offer a true bottom line return for the majority of students in terms of graduation, employment, and wages. College Disrupted details the changes that American higher education will undergo, including the transformation from packaged courses and degrees to truly unbundled course offerings, along with those that it will not. Written by a professional at the only investment firm focused on the higher education market, College Disrupted takes a creative view of the forces roiling higher education and the likely outcome, including light-hearted, real-life anecdotes that illustrate the author’s points.
6. The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere by Kevin Carey
Exploding college prices and a flagging global economy, combined with the derring-do of a few intrepid innovators, have created a dynamic climate for a total rethinking of an industry that has remained virtually unchanged for a hundred years. In The End of College, Kevin Carey, an education researcher and writer, draws on years of in-depth reporting and cutting-edge research to paint a vivid and surprising portrait of the future of education. Carey explains how two trends—the skyrocketing cost of college and the revolution in information technology—are converging in ways that will radically alter the college experience, upend the traditional meritocracy, and emancipate hundreds of millions of people around the world.
7. Raising Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers Can Do by Daniel T. Willingham
Everyone agrees that reading is important, but kids today tend to lose interest in reading before adolescence. In Raising Kids Who Read, bestselling author and psychology professor Daniel T. Willingham explains this phenomenon and provides practical solutions for engendering a love of reading that lasts into adulthood. Like Willingham’s much-lauded previous work, Why Don’t Students Like School?, this new book combines evidence-based analysis with engaging, insightful recommendations for the future. Intellectually rich argumentation is woven seamlessly with entertaining current cultural references, examples, and steps for taking action to encourage reading. The three key elements for reading enthusiasm—decoding, comprehension, and motivation—are explained in depth in Raising Kids Who Read. Teachers and parents alike will appreciate the practical orientation toward supporting these three elements from birth through adolescence.
8. Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education by George D. Kuh and Stanley O. Ikenberry
The book presents a reframed conception and approach to student learning outcomes assessment. The authors explain why it is counterproductive to view collecting and using evidence of student accomplishment as primarily a compliance activity. Today’s circumstances demand a fresh and more strategic approach to the processes by which evidence about student learning is obtained and used to inform efforts to improve teaching, learning, and decision-making. Whether you’re in the classroom, an administrative office, or on an assessment committee, data about what students know and are able to do are critical for guiding changes that are needed in institutional policies and practices to improve student learning and success.
9. What Connected Educators Do Differently by Todd Whitaker and Jeffrey Zoul
Todd Whitaker, Jeffrey Zoul, and Jimmy Casas are widely acclaimed experts on teaching and leading and are pioneers in the education twitter verse, and now they are sharing their best practices! In What Connected Educators Do Differently, they show how being a connected educator-by using social media to connect with peers across the country and even across the globe-will greatly enhance your own learning and your success in a school or classroom. You’ll find out how to create a personal and professional learning network to share resources and ideas, gain support, and make an impact on others. By customizing your professional development in this way, you’ll be able to learn what you want, how you want, when you want. Best of all, you’ll become energized and inspired by all the great ideas out there and how you can contribute, benefiting both you and your students. Whether you are a teacher or school leader, you will come away from this book with step-by-step advice and fresh ideas to try immediately. Being a connected educator has never been easier or more important than it is right now!
10. Educating the More Able Student: What Works and Why by Martin Stephen and Ian Warwick
This thought-provoking book addresses the current crisis in education for the most able. Grounded in the classroom, the authors draw on their own first-hand experiences and international research to scrutinize techniques and practices from leading countries, exploring the more divisive issues that have damaged teaching worldwide. Demonstrating what works well in teaching the most able, and also what does not work, the book offers a radical solution, a stimulus to thought and a way forward for teachers, academics and all those with responsibility for ensuring high standards in education, including governments and members of regulatory authorities.
11. Building a Community of Self-Motivated Learners: Strategies to Help Students Thrive in School and Beyond by Larry Ferlazzo
In this book, Larry Ferlazzo looks at how teachers can create classroom conditions that are needed for motivation to grow in the first place. Ferlazzo provides research-based suggestions on what you can do today to help students want to develop qualities like physical health, grit, flow, and a desire to transfer what they’re learning to life outside of school. At the end of each chapter, you’ll find high-interest lesson plans, correlated to the Common Core ELA/Literacy Standards, that set the stage for long-term positive impacts.
12. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire
Based on the authors’ wildly popular Huffington Post article “18 Things That Creative People Do Differently” (which generated 5 million views and 500,000 Facebook shares in one week), this well-researched and engaging book uncovers what we know about creativity, and what anyone can do to enhance this essential aspect of their lives and work.
Is there any on your shelf that you already read? Share with us in the comment section below.
