4 Books I recommend
Written on July 10, 2006 – 10:14 pm | by Ed Warkentin
I’m here at the Discovery Education Leadership Conference in Silver Spring, Maryland. The conversations with different teachers from all over the country have been very stimulating. As we have been talking, I have found myself referring to a few books that fit into the conversation that I recommend.
So, I thought I’d do a quick blog post about them with all the information you need to get your hands on them.
The World Is Flat, by Thomas Friedman has been dubbed “the most important book written in the US in the last 10 years”. This has been recommended and/or referred to by almost every educational technology leader/thinker I’ve heard in the last year (Warlick, Richardson, etc., etc.)
This will put into perspective all the whirlwind changes that are going on in the world economy. Although he doesn’t explicitly discuss education as a main purpose of the book, the implications are clear for educators. Our students can, will, and must compete as an individual with the rest of the world, most probably with individuals in India, China, and elsewhere that are very hungry to succeed in the world economy, more so than most of our students.
A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne
This book helps teachers and others clarify that there is a culture of poverty that we must confront in (many of) our students. She explains the mindset that my students were coming to me with that I never understood before. Without this understanding, I was frustrated and didn’t know how to reach them. I can’t say that I have had miraculously different results and this is the silver bullet to reaching all of your students, but this book sure made things more clear. As a result of reading this book, I have made significant progress in addressing the false beliefs that my students have about themselves and their opportunities in the world.
And finally, there’s Will Richardson’s book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms
(The cover is much, much cooler than this image shows – Amazon seems to have put up the plain pre-publishing one)
This book, in my opinion, has got to be the best book on these tools for a teacher today. Will Richardson is what some might call the “blog-father”; he introduced us to blogging at NECC a few years ago. He does a marvelous job of introducing the reader to blogging, podcasting, wikis, RSS, social bookmarking (delicious & furl), and a few other things I’ve forgotten at the moment. He doesn’t stop at describing the glitz and coolness of these tools, though! He thoroughly describes the pedagogy and best practices for the classroom. Chock full of marvelous ideas! You will be inspired!
I have to acknowledge David Warlick, though, as well. His tool, ClassBlogmeister has been a tremendous help to me in my classroom to implement much of what he and Richardson have to say on the subject of web 2.0 technologies. Warlick’s book Classroom Blogging – a Teacher’s Guide to the Blogosphere was also very helpful in my growth in these areas.
I’ve got to go to bed, even though my body is on Pacific time, I have to function on Eastern time in the morning, whether I feel like it or not. I hope these book recommendations are helpful to you!
Please leave a comment about these books, if you have read them, or about books along these lines that you would like to recommend.
