Schools and Instruction Books

This is a good book to read. This was recommended by my academic advisor and Amazon had it for an excellent price. Basically, trying not to tell everything in the book, or spoil the story, but you should not let children run or operate machines or heavy equipment. I recommend this book. I think I will read some more.

Seymour Papert, a mathematician, educator, and scientist, begins "The Children's Machine" with the question, "How does the relationship between children and computers affect learning?

He writes passionately about his experiences with schools, children, learning, and their intersections. Drawing from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, Papert lays out the compelling reasons for rethinking education in this Information Age. His words echo those of Piaget and many others that are completely convinced that there is indeed hope for change. Continuing in the tradition of his previous book "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas" and thoroughly describing the further innovative potential of his own Logo program, Papert does not fail to educate, inspire, and provoke his readers. He ends the book with a chapter on what can be done now, and, almost 15 years since its release, his ideas are still relevant.

Papert makes some very interesting points in this book about how computers are currently used in schools and how they should be used in schools. Papert explains traditional schools use computers as a substitute for the teacher. Meaning, programs are written to simulate what a teacher would do and the program is often looking for a very specific right or wrong answer. Papert suggests a better use of the computer is to allow the child or student to control what the computer does. This is possible by a programming language called Logo which was developed by Papert while working at MIT. The programming language uses a turtle, who receives instructions from the student in the form of commands, as the basis for learning. The student then has the ability to make the turtle behave in any creative way he or she wishes. One of the key benefits is rather than looking for a specific answer to a question, this use of the computer allows the student to explore and be creative even learning from their mistakes. I've used Logo and can say this is an excellent way for 'anyone' to learn.

The Children's Machine addresses the many ways students learn. Papert uncovers the reality that students learn opposite of how our westernized world sees this process. According to Papert, students learn naturally outside the four walls of a classroom in which literacy is seen as only teachable through textbooks. The Children's Machine uncovers the deficiencies by which most schools run that prevents students from learning as they should, in a self-directed manner where there are answers other than yes or no. Shades of grey are more accepted in Papert's constructivist view of education he outlines in the book rather than the "official theory" of learning which only sees black and white. Papert has self-created the LOGO program, MicroWorlds. With this program, Papert further illustrates how students can learn without restrictions. Students are encouraged to experiment and use the computer as a tool to shape their own thinking. Mistakes are encouraged, as these mistakes will be formed into discoveries. Another recommended read: Mindstorms.

This was an interesting book that did a good job of bringing up controversial and thought-provoking subjects relating to education and technology. Although Papert makes some good points about how technology could be better utilized in the classroom, he takes the extreme point of view that it could and should totally revolutionize the way that kids learn and that schools operate. Whether or not you as the reader agree with him or not, it is a good read for anyone interested in either education or technology that is sure to make you at least analyze your own points of view on both topics.

I found this book was overrated and lumpy. I found more concise and useful information in WrightsLaw. This book talks about a non-existent world of school administrators, and impractical and misleading sunny little paragraphs about what to do, like they will actually work. The brief sojourn into methodology is glaringly misinformed, ignoring 40 years of Applied Behavioral Analysis, OT, Speech and other therapies with a dismissive paragraph about Lovaas Method vs. TEACCH. This book is long-winded other places where a tactful editor could have made it a lot easier to read and understand. The best part was the index of common phrases, the cute case examples about kids and the list of other books to read. Some of the copy came off as insulting too, like parents are slow-witted and need help in understanding everything, so speak slowly. Wished I'd spent the money on something else.

Buying this book was one of the best things I have done in a very long time for my son with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Dealing with the morons in our county school system is aggrevating under any circumstances. This time, however, I was armed with extremely valuable information. After reading it cover to cover and some sections twice, the "administrators" could not pull any punches or violate any of my son's rights. Thank you Beth Fouse for empowering me to be a better advocate for my little boy!

If it were possible to rate this book with less than one star I would have done so. I purchased and read this book hoping for some insight which would help me prepare for my daughter's IEP. I wish I had spent the time reading this book organizing my closets or on some worthy endeavor as I feel that the time I spent reading was wasted. I found this book to oversimplify the necessary elements of an IEP and of the IDEA. For parents who have never been through an IEP, this will not give them much assistance. I much prefer the Wrightslaw publications, as they are much more thorough and better outline the children's rights.

This is the most informative book that I have ever read regarding IEP's for children on the Autistic Spectrum. I am buying two copies for my School District, so that they can be on the same page as parents, regarding up to date information. The book touches on State by State laws too. This book helped me to clarify exactly what is needed in the IEP, and supplied information on cases where provisions have been made for special computer programs, after school programs etc. I highly recommend devouring this book and becomming the leader at the IEP meeting.

This is the most informative book that I have ever read regarding IEP's for children on the Autistic Spectrum. I am buying two copies for my School District, so that they can be on the same page as parents, regarding up to date information. The book touches on State by State laws too. This book helped me to clarify exactly what is needed in the IEP, and supplied information on cases where provisions have been made for special computer programs, after school programs etc. I highly recommend devouring this book and becomming the leader at the IEP meeting.

This book a great resource for people who are studying de Chirico--not only does it contain tons of illustrations, but it has provenance and condition information for all of de Chirico's Metaphysical paintings. This is especially useful if you want to know which paintings of his were owned by the Surrealists, who often re-titled his works.

At the same time, however, this book is incredibly difficult to use. THERE IS NO INDEX. Why? I don't know, but I do know it's annoying. If I wanted to only know about de Chirico's relationship to Apollinaire, instead of just looking up the man's name in an index, I have to skim through the entire freaking book. aaaaaaaaaaargh. And let me tell you, Baldacci's "prose" is dry dry dry dry dry. Furthermore, when Baldacci is trying to cite something, instead of just giving the reader his sourse or spelling out his reasoning, he just tells you to look at a previous part of the book (but of course not where exactly one is supposed to look). Yay, now I have to skim through more of this freaking tome.

Basically, this book is essential for people studying de Chirico, but I would not read it for entertainment.

excellent photos.

a fascinating period, the pre-surrealist era. not much has been
published about de chirico's brother, alberto savinio, musician, poet, and painter, who contributed more to de chirico's development than commonly known.

unfortunately this book is marred by poor organization and writing. after developing interesting thoughts, baldacci then admits that there is not evidence to support his suppositions..."probably", "if", "doubtless", "we can even imagine", and so on. i've read better papers by undergraduates. better writers would summarize where baldacci chooses to drag in long, diffuse quotations.

baldacci is fascinated by unknowns about de chirico. much about the past may remain unknown, a fact of life.

This book is for those just discovering De Chirico, as well as those who have valued him for many years. The color reproductions are many and excellent. His various subjects are presented in developing groups; great idea. This painter was so honored in the heyday of surrealism; because he was the most original; the pioneer of a large sweeping mood of painting. You can read as much of the text as you wish; but don't be discouraged by the endless rambling of the author; he just didn't know when to stop. If you were not a De Chirico fan when you get this book, you will be when you own it.

This book is on the highest level of scholarship and aesthetic criticism, bringing together many facets of art, philosophy and literature that gave birth to de Chirico's great works. Paolo Baldacci is a brilliant and erudite writer and an expert on this important, original artist. I am very disappointed that this excellent work is now out of print. The reproductions are of the highest quality as well, and this is a book that should be on the shelf of everyone interested in surrealism.

True surrealism is the most profound form of art because it tackles the absurdities and contradictions of our modern world and helps us to work them out through our Subconsciousness and dreams. The first time I saw an exhibition of de Chirico's works, I had extremely vivid and memorable dreams for a week after and felt "cured."

But like any religion that can deeply touch people, Surrealism, once it became famous also attracted its fair share of quacks and charlatans. This is why de Chirico is so important: In the same way that Patti Smith was 'punk' before Punk Rock was officially invented, de Chirico was a surrealist before the Surrealist Movement took conscious shape with Andre Breton's shrill "Manifesto of Surrealism" in 1924. De Chirico didn't jump on the bandwagon. He was pulling it!

This worthy but pricey (therefore minus a couple of stars) book focuses on this early period when de Chirico was happily pursuing his own path into the twilight, undisturbed by the excessive fuss that the Surrealist movement and its showmen, like Dali, later whipped up.

Paintings like "The Endless Voyage" (1914) show a jarring clutter of objects setting up intangible lines of tension, often with humorous results. In effect, his art works like the human brain, abstracting images and objects from their natural context and relocating them to the landscape of the mind and memory.

Setting the stage with his deserted cityscapes painted with sharp contrasts of light and shadow, distorted perspectives, and a blurring of the border between interior and exterior, de Chirico evokes a haunting, ominous, but strangely relaxing dream world. This deep psychological aspect of his paintings has him constantly reinterpreting themes, leading to recurrent motifs. In these early paintings lavishly reproduced in this massive tome, he constantly uses statues as focal points, later replaced by his trademark faceless mannequins. Other mysterious objects further increase the element of enigma.

De Chirico was a surrealist more by accident than design and his work relied less heavily on overt humor and shock than the more famous surrealists who followed him, like Dali and Magritte. De Chirico's focus was always on beauty and the creation of moods through an appeal to a deeper psychological language. For this reason, while much surrealist work has dated like an old joke, Chirico's art is still as fresh as ever.

"The second edition of Design Principles and Problems is the result of a unique collaboration between an artist who has taught basis design to a great variety of college students for more than 37 years and an experienced professional writer of college textbooks.
Together we have tried to create a book that prepares a solid foundation for studying all the fine and applied arts and is at the same time READABLE, INTERESTING, AND CLEAR....."
[from the book of the preface]

This is sort of your standard textbook. It tells you what you need to know but doesn;t really engage your artistic or design sense very much. I obviously bought it for use in a class but discontinued using it halfway through the class because I didn't find it to be much help. I definitey referenced it throughout the semester and do not regret buying it but it isn't exactly a book to get excited about.

This book is beneficial in learning the vocabulary and basics of Graphic Design. I did find that it was necessary to go outside the book to fully understand Principles of Unity. The book is an excellent resource for the beginning Graphics Major.

There is no way I can give five stars for this book at this price. Only something purporting to be a textbook could get away with this. It is no wonder that college/university students are banding together to split the cost of books, priced as this is, buying from the internet used market, or forgoing the purchase all together.

Aside from having an obscene price, its presentation further insults the already injurious price. While the content and illustrations do their jobs well, there is no color until about 80% through the book. Any number, maybe most of the illustrations could or should have been presented in color. If there is a point to be shown in a monochrome image, fine. This book was last printed in 1996. The price is today's inflated textbook price. Any book about art, with anything near this one's price should be full of color, anywhere it can be used.

This is a $50 book - max.

I am an artist. It is more than a career choice, it is a lifestyle. If you want your art to be more effective, for personal or public reasons, studying design principles is paramount! I can't stress enough the importance of studying the elements and functions of design elements. This text, Design Principles & Problems, will put you on the right course for studying this subject. Currently we are using this text in my Design Foundations class. It is a rich maunual with many comparitive illustrations to referance during the course of your study. This isn't a book that you use, then discard, it is a keeper!

The incredibly horrible production quality of this book nearly outweighs its excellent content.
Picture selection is terrible, often not illustrating the intended point; photo quality is abysmal. Typos galore. Entire paragraphs repeated. Entire paragraphs dropped out.

Vic LeMire provides some excellent technical advice for those who play the position and I recommend the book.

The picture quality is not that great and in some instances, distracts from the concepts explained. For an advanced goalie, its no big deal because it is easy to visualize Mr. Lemire's style tips and pointers, but for somebody new to the position, it could be a bit confusing.

That said, it is a superb manual for anybody seeking self-development as a hockey goaltender.

Goaltenders are not targets - how true is that! This book has helped me, my son and his best friend to become the best 3 goalies the southern hemishpere has ever seen! This superb book, coupled with Vic's second book, "Off The Post", has given us the knowledge to do our job as best as we can, and after practising what Vic preaches, we can all see the great improvement in each other, as well as ourselves. Thank you Vic, for helping us acheive our best.

This book has been an enormous help. I read the section I want to work on just before going to the rink and put it into practice. The advice has been sound and very accurate. I learned everything I needed from this book to begin building the skills needed to be a success in the net. You will use this book whether you have just begun goaltending or have been doing it for years. It is something you can use your whole netminding career.

This is a very good book for the beginning goalie or parent of a new goalie. I did notice some helpful tips in the latter part of the book that might be of use for some advanced level player, but for the most part this is for the new kid on the block. It's 5 stars for the beginner, 3 stars for the advanced.

I really enjoyed this book, but I wouldn't say that it actually teaches you the 'how to's' of graphic design. On the other hand the book is fantastic at showing real-life examples as well as all of the many applications of graphic design which assists one to decide which path to focus on.

Loaded with illustrations, graphics and layouts, this intoduction to graphic design covers basics that will "charge" your creative batteries.

Graphic Design School has some useful tools for beginners, but more than half of the book is outdated. Graphic Design School has a few sections on design theory, and more than half the book are tutorials in photoshop, illustrator, etc.

The book boasts a bit how today you cannot talk about or teach graphic desing without addressing technology, This is where the book faulters. Technology tchanges so quickly now that this book's many tutorials end up being very obsolete (pre adobe CS). It would have been nice if this came with a CD that could get updates for tutorials, etc. A book like this needs to make a new edition atleast every 2 years to keep up.

Yes the book is visual. Yes it has examples of other student's work. Yes there is helpful information in it.

HOWEVER, having worked in the field for more than 10 years, I find this book simplistic, and frankly the samples of work included are not very good.

Why would I want to emulate design I don't like?

I found the examples to be dated, and I found the book lacking in teaching skills that designers really need to know.

If this is a fair representation of what is being taught in design school, we are in a very sad place.

There are so many other GOOD books out there. Buy one of those.

I have met many web designers who have never learned the basic skills of graphic design. "Graphic design School" is the best book out there today on learning the techniques and tools for basic graphic design practices. Swann covers the 'Language of Design,' 'Principles and Techniques' and 'Commercial Practice.' Short, concise and beautifully illustrated to relay the importance of knowing this craft for a solid design foundation.

Web colors are not mentioned, nor do you see anything about browser selection nor any debate over screen size. What you do see are the brief introductions to corporate design, logos, editorial design and packaging. All basics to build on for a graphic design career, including web design.

It's been a while since I've used this book - I borrowed and used it for a few months a few years ago, when I first started teaching and had almost no other resources. I did not like it enough to buy my own copy.

This is maybe a little better than some other books I've seen, but I don't seem to like *any* pre-made worksheets. The idea of notes "spelling words" strikes me as pedagogically flawed, and the ways of explaining rhythm are very dry and meaningless and don't seem to help students, in my opinion. I've seen so many students who have had music for years and yet have no idea what the difference between a half note and quarter note are. Kind of makes you wonder what we're doing wrong.

Anyway, now I personally create all my worksheets for all grades and find that the amount of learning is much greater.

One other point, although I'm not absolutely positive it was this book, I think it was: when I was first teaching, one day I needed a warm-up worksheet and was in a hurry. I quickly flipped through this book (I think) and xeroxed a sheet about spelling words with notes on the clef. When my middle schoolers completed it, I was stunned and embarrassed to realize that one of the words was "Fagged"! Needless to say, some of my eighth graders did not handle it very well. So watch out for that one!

First the pluses, Progress chart, great for tracking students progress. Everything is divided into concepts. Concepts progress in a logical manner. Answer key is in a handy place. Minuses, some of the questions are not presented in a consistent manner. For instance, when comparing whole note values to those that are smaller the question should have always read "The tone of a whole note is ___ times as long as the tone of a quarter note." Then Half note is __ as long as a whole note" In my experience students understood better when the larger note value was placed first. It is also confusing when the answer is sometimes a fraction and sometimes a whole number. Some terminology may need to be changed if you only use the word tone for the sound of a note and not it's duration. Overall a valuable resource, I mean, who wants to reinvent the wheel when Ms. Adair has done such a good job?

As a beginner at the piano I thought this book could help me, since it is a "teaching" book. After getting part way thought this "thick" spiral bound book I found things in the book went beyond the beginners' understanding. Beginners can gain something from the book if they use it as a suppliment to a more basic book. It is not for beginners trying to learn on their own.

If you're a music teacher, just starting out or already a seasoned campaigner, you will sympathize with not being able to find just the theory and note speller books that you would like for your students. This book is exactly what you need!

This book is a Music Teacher's dream! No matter what concept you're teaching, this book always seems to have an activity to reinforce what you've taught, and see if it is being understood! Very Useful!

I would like to thank author Alden Studebaker for his gifted talent for providing a path for my family and I to study the bible together. His writings have not only brought my family closer together but has shown us how we may search to better understand Gods word.

The reviewer who claims to be a Unity Minister clearly does not understand those of us who every Sunday sit and listen to Ministers who read and study the good book everyday. The reviewer needs to spend more time LISTENING to the flock than listening to himself.

Thanks again Alden Studebaker, your book has opened up a new begining for my family.

"WISDOM FOR A LIFETIME" is a much-needed, timely and outstanding guide for anyone wanting to know more about the greatest book ever written. Alden Studebaker writes with a reader friendliness that informs, educates and entertains. He opens up a new view of the Bible with his practical and humorous style. I heartily recommend it.

There is a big difference between wisdom and knowledge.

Charles Fillmore, the father of the Unity movement, defines wisdom as "Intuitive knowing; spiritual intuition; the voice of God within as the source of our understanding..." and of knowledge he says, "Intellectual knowledge is independent of feeling; it is literal knowledge without consideration of Spirit."

The author of this book, Unity minister Alden Studebaker, seems to have confused the two in his book, Wisdom for a Lifetime. Entirely too much of this text (better than half) has to do with the author's criteria for selecting what he considers a "recommended" translation of the Bible and his methodology for studying it. Any Unity student knows that Bible study is guided by Spirit, not directed through adherence to "guidelines".

He states that in choosing a "recommended" translation we immediately reject any Bible version translated by one man. He makes special mention of the Lamsa Bible (used for decades in Unity and loved by all Truth students) as a translation not "recommended" under his criteria. His reasoning? "Two heads are better than one!" Well, if we follow this logic then we should reject each of the Prophets (only one head) and the work of Unity's Charles Fillmore (only one head) such as the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, as lacking the insight afforded by another head. I'm sure that also means we must reject Jesus the Christ as well (after all, he only had one head)!

There are many Bibles out there translated by one man, all of them very scholarly and above this kind of criticism. Translation by committee is obviously more important to the author than the revelation of one Divinely Inspired translator. In this implication, author Studebaker, as a Unity minister, shows that he has lost his spiritual focus. Unity is all about individual revelation and personal spiritual direction!

In Unity, we can only understand the Bible and benefit from it through the eyes of Spirit, not through nitpicking and hair-splitting of the letter!

I had high hopes that this book would continue in the tradition of the great classic Unity works of Elizabeth Sand Turner (whose superb set of 3 books on the Bible are staples in any Truth library) but I was sorely disappointed.

I would advise Truth Students to stick with Charles Fillmore's Metaphysical Bible Dictionary and The Revealing Word, and Elizabeth Sand Turner's Let There Be Light, Your Hope of Glory, and Be Ye Transformed. These five books, along with a good Bible (KJV, RSV, Lamsa, or whichever translation you are guided to by Spirit) will provide all the tools any Unity student could possibly need.

As a Unity minister myself, I cannot recommend this book to anyone, because while it is full of knowledge, it is sorely lacking in wisdom.

Wisdom for a Lifetime is a well-written, engaging book which has made my study of the Bible deeper and more meaningful. While I have grown up in Unity and had passing familiarity with a number of well-known Bible stories and verses, I had never really studied the Bible. I was intrigued by the concept of Rev. Studebaker's book and found it able to re-ignite my interest in the Bible. It gave me insights into additional study tools which have enriched my study. Wisdom also helped me to select a Bible that built upon my childhood exposure, yet was understandable for me today. And to my benefit, the book has truly helped get my Bible into my hands on a regular basis for the first time in my life. I strongly recommend this book for anyone seeking to unlock the wisdom of the Bible for themselves.

Too many people don't read the Bible and if they only would, their lives would be immeaurably richer. They would find Wisdom for the whole of their lives if they did. This is the theme of this charming, lighthearted, yet scholastically sound book on learning how to read and interpret the best-selling and least-read book of all time, the Bible.

When you pick up a Bible, it can seem daunting but author Studebaker assures us that there are many things you can do to ease the pain. He trains the reader on how to select a Bible, how to find supplementary books to provide special insights, and then gives, rather remarkably, I think, lenses by which the reader can practice seeing a Bible passage from NINE different points of view.

The main focus, all the time, is to help the reader want to use the Bible to find answers to his or her life questions. I find this extraordinary. I also love the fine balance between intellect and intuition this book advocates. To me, scripture of any kind deserves both.

There is a reviewer who claims to be a "Unity minister" and yet shows little understanding of this balance in his review of this book. Just because Studebaker recommends Bibles who have more than one translator, doesn't mean he doesn't find the Lamsa version useful. In fact, he says that he does. I'm a Lamsa fan myself but this doesn't keep me from realizing that it is unlikely that his version came from an original Aramaic text. That said, his Bible is still fresh and insightful. What's more, Studebaker nevers says you shouldn't use a Bible outside of his "recommended list." In fact, he DOES say that he recommends that we choose whatever version we will actually read!

Also, to say that the Lamsa Bible is loved by "all Truth students" is gross exaggeration. It is simply not true.

The reviewer's comments are so out of place and irrelevant to the book in question that I wonder if he may not have a special agenda; I do smell a vendetta against the author! For example, the "wisdom" the reviewer objects to is never intended to be the wisdom of Studebaker's book but the wisdom of the Bible. This is so obvious--but not to our reviewer. What he erroneously accuses Studebaker of doing in his book, our reviewer demonstrates in his review, namely nitpicking and losing his spiritual focus!

I, also a Unity minister, Bible interpreter, and Lamsa fan, strongly recommend WISDOM FOR A LIFETIME as the best book out there on how to get the Bible off the shelf and into your hands!

"Best Practice" appears to be the latest whole language code word. Many of the "best practices" suggested here have little or no solid foundation on convergent, juried, replicable research. To say that these practices make common sense is simply not evidence enough to implement them in our schools. For the first time since the Progressivism of the 1930's educational reform is not coming from our colleges and universities. They have, after all, perpetuated the "best practices" that have been failing our children since they were first widely implemented in our public schools in the 1950's. Reform is coming from political leaders, as in the "No Child Left Behind" legislation, and scientific researchers who have been commissioned by Congress. Whole school reform that is based on scientifically based, EFFECTIVE practices demonstrate positive change in the first year, not in the three to five years indicated in this book. The "Report of the National Reading Panel" would be a good place to start looking for effective school reform practices. This writer is the Coordinator of Instruction for a large, urban school system.

As an instructor of a graduate level education course, this book is an excellent example of the best that is happening in classrooms. It is filled with practical and engaging ways to involve students in their own learning. A must for all first and 20 year teachers.

As part of my school's curriculum committee, Best Practices is on our assigned reading list. After reading the introduction I was shocked to find the book not only interesting, but also easy to read. The book's main premise is that school reform, what ever direction a school chooses to take, is a process, not a magic potion. Meaningful school reform, according to the authors, could and prbably should take at least three years. No one standardized test and no one curriculum can be a cure-all for improving student performance. Best Practice tells how to begin the process of reform to produce improved student performance in an environment dedicated to that process.

As an instructor of a graduate level education course, this book is an excellent example of the best that is happening in classrooms. It is filled with practical and engaging ways to involve students in their own learning. A must for all first and 20 year teachers.

Too often we base our educational practice on ideology, folk lore, or tradition. Education has suffered from this. We have also suffered from those who would use a business paradigm to make educational decisions. Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde of synthesized the major research findings related to effective teaching in various academic areas. They present their findings in a way that is very easy to understand and apply. This should be required reading for all principals, teachers, school board members, governors, presidents, and legislators.

This is one of those text books you have to keep. It's not expensive enough to be a text book in the first place. It has lots of great references to websites teachers should make use of. I've been passing the website information on to my computer literate teaching friends.

I respectfully encourage all serious reviewers to avoid the video review option. The video review sacrifices both rapid scanning of diverse views, and the ability to create added value from automated text search.

edutopia is a true gift to humanity from the George Lucas foundation. I consider the book and the DVD to be a superb starting pointfor the necessary global transformation.

Chapter Nine discusses a dozen promising practices that work:
01 Peer Instruction
02 Cross-age tutoring
03 Bringing local experts into the classroom
04 Multi-age classrooms
05 Cooperative learning
06 Class-size reduction
07 Team teaching
08 Looping (teachers stay with same students for several years)
09 Block scheduling
10 Schools within schools
11 School teams
12 Community service

This is a superbly crafted multi-media teaching tool that every teacher, parent, and administrator will learn from and be strengthened by.

My only disappointment is that the book's sponsors and authors focused so narrowly on just the USA and how the wisdom in this book might be applied within our existing academic and vocational infrastructure. My own focus is on the five billion poor who do not have the time for 18 years of rote education. Simply by subsidizing cells phones and creating a global network of 100 million volunteers using Telelanguage.com, we could offer free education to the five billion poor, and our own population, "one cell call at a time." Education is the only way we can create stabilizing wealth--this excellent book set its sights too low.

This book is nothing but George Lucas' personal tribute to the technology that made him a superstar. This book is filled with rhetoric, unsubstantiated claims and lots of full-color pictures. It does not have any use for someone in a teacher education program, as it reads more like a coffee table book. The included CD-ROM is the icing on the huge cake of b.s., and goes to show, once again, that if you are rich and famous, you can publish anything.

This is exactly what it promises to be --a very informative description of the best learning contexts that are being built with new technologies. Rather than celebrating the technology it focuses on the relationship between and among people and the way in which new forms of information and communication are reshaping these relationships.

If you want to think beyond the two covers of a book and 4 walls of a classroom, if you want to redesign schools and their communities as places of serious, playful learning in social contexts, this book will push your thinking. Yes, this book (and the 11 short movies) celebrates learning. No, this book is a not a critical examination of research that validates the learning outcomes although, for some of these projects, such studies exist.

A "success story" has value because it shows us how people have come to work together to create projects that push the boundaries past the routine. The purpose of these stories is to not simply to inform. We need stories like the ones in this book to inspire us, to energize us to move beyond what is now, and to realize that each of us can and should be thinking about what can be.

I use this book in my graduate courses to expose students to the range of project-based learning applications of technology, the evolving role in technology in assessment, the ways in which communities have become more involved in education and how communication technology is reshaping professional development into a continual everyday process. While a consistent philosophical and theoretical position underlies the examples, students need to abstract the principles.

The range and choice of stories is excellent but the stories are brief. Personally, I would have preferred a single spaced book with twice the information on each of the projects and examples. But in a multimedia connected world, stories can link to web sites, videos, and more extensive information on the Edutopia site and on the web. Celebrating success may not fit the critical stance that some take toward the work of education, but with all of the challenges, it is inspiring when people connect.

During a time of state budget crises that are calling for drastic changes to the educational system as we know it, Edutopia provides a breath of fresh air and a sense of hope for teachers and parents. With the budget cuts looming , and demand for accountability as measured by performance on simplified tests, and the need to do more with less, the more is, unfortunately, focused on increasing test performance. Conspicuously absent from the center of concerns is the children's learning process.

In creating Edutopia, the book, the newsletter and the web resources, The George Lucas Educational Foundation's work finds our children and their learning processes at the heart of the educational system. While many of us have grown weary of reforming education, and have resigned ourselves to the concept of "tinkering" with the system (Tyack and Cuban, 1995, Tinkering Toward Utopia), Edutopia has held on to the belief in the power of the people to make significant, lasting, and positive changes to the way our children learn, develop, and grow through the educational process. While there is great value to tinkering, Edutopia shows us that the only limitations we have are those that we place on ourselves. The contributors to this book shows us how much power is unleashed when we allow ourselves to let go of our fears of change and our reluctance to embrace the possibilities that lie in the amazing digital age.

Edutopia is not a traditional educational book. If you are looking for a book on learning theories, research studies, or foundations of a discipline, Amazon will be able to help you locate them. There are also books that will tell you how poorly we are doing at educating all children. Edutopia is a unique book filled with creative approaches to learning, assessment, community involvement, expanding the classroom, creatively shaping the learning environment. This book is about the passion that we have for the development of our children. The authors urge us to break out of the lament which plagues our practice, to free our imagination to use emerging technology to energize learning. The book is filled with real life examples with ordinary teachers who take extraordinary steps to inculcate innovative and substantial changes to the children's learning process. These are examples of people who believe that they can make a difference, that real learning can occur despite budget cuts and "uncontrollable" outside forces. The stories are about people who refuse to settle.

When I read the newspapers or listen to the evening news and get discouraged with talks of the demise of our children's education, and I am tempted to settle for the mere tinkering of our children's educational process, I pick up Edutopia and am reminded that there are people out there who are making incredible differences in the lives of children.