Active Books

"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.

I found this book to contain many useful tidbits of information, especially about prevailing weather conditions. The author gives insightful and non obvious ways for determining the approach of Santa Ana's which itself is probably worth the price of the book

This is a good book for those interested in cruising the west coast, you can always get something out of the book if you plan to make that trip up the coast, lots of good information to research and make plans from.

After cruising in the Pacific NW for the past two years using the Douglass and Hemingway guides and the Waggoner Guide, we were admittedly spoiled. If that's the quality you expect, you won't get it here. On the other hand, we couldn't find an alternative, and this is better than nothing. The harbor diagrams were nice, but there aren't enough of them and what there are don't provide enough detail. The landmarks mentioned in the text often don't appear in the diagrams. We also noticed inaccuracies, but this could be due to time. For example, the fuel dock in Morro Bay wasn't where the guide said it was. However, the woman at the Visitor Information Center also thought it was in the direction indicated in the book. (For others looking for it, it's across from marker 12, not beyond 18.)

From a recent sailing trip out of Santa Barbara through the channel islands I can tell you that this book is invaluable. His treatment of safe ports and refuges (arranged very well but conditions) was fantastic and kept us out of danger.

We have used Brian Fagans guidebooks from SD to SF for many years, but this is the best of the lot. We recently led a cruise to the Channel Islands, and made this a "must" for the cruisers, all of whom praised it highly. Really THE guidebook to coastal cruising in Central-Southern California---and a bargain!

I read this book cover to cover, and worked through virtually all the examples. There's a lot of good information here, but proofreading is poor, and more information is needed to get some of the more complex sample code (provided at the author's web site) operational on one's local machine. That's rather frustrating after making a large investment in studying the text.

Most of the textual content of the book is well-written and helpful. Chapter 6, "Using ASP.NET Web Controls", is a bit garbled and buggy.

The web page for downloads related to the book currently has no errata section, in spite of the existence of plenty of errata. Perhaps one reason there is no list is that no easy way is provided to contact the authors or publisher with bug reports.

For a five-star rating from me this book would need:

(1) Another proofreading pass, with emphasis on making sure code examples work (with thought given to conditions on local machines that might cause particular ones not to work); and

(2) An active feedback loop between readers and the author. A discussion forum for reader-to-reader interaction would be helpful, too.

I found this book to be very helpful! It is an excellent source of information for the VB6 developer making the transition to .NET. The OOP chapter was great. It's great for learning to use the IDE and other related features. In reference to the last review: I found that there are revisions and a feedback loop available at the website.

This book gave me a good understanding of the methodology of ASP.NET as well as the concepts behind it. The organization of the book is good for someone new to ASP.NET and C# as it starts simple and proceeds forward in a logical manner to more complex topics.

However, I agree with a previous reviewer that an updated version or an errata page on the publisher's web site are sorely needed. This too kept me from giving it 5 stars.

This book was started with a pre-release of Visual Studio.NET 2002 so the example code won't match the code you generate yourself; most people should be able to figure out which parts of the sample code are relevent. A few of the samples won't work as-is but that shouldn't stop experienced programmers from figuring out how to get it to work.

This was a delightful book to read. I am a very seasoned VB6/ASP Developer who is about to get his feet wet with .NET. Your book provides the direction I need to make a comfortable transition...Your examples were of the level I anticipated, and your dialog made it very easy to follow along.

My hat goes off to all of the authors who created this very readable and worthwhile book! Thanks so much!

I preordered and received it on April 12,2002.
Hasta ahora el libro esta excelente. El Capitulo de "Object-Oriented Changes in Visual Basic" esta tan bueno que vale lo que pesa en oro.
Nunca habia visto una explicacion de Programacion Orientada a Objeto tan facil de entender; con ejemplos tan claros.
El libro no es grande asi que se puede leer en un par de semanas.
El precio esta muy bueno tambien.
Eso si, debes tener idea de como programar en VB6 para que puedas entender las diferencias con VB.NET.

This book has LOTS of interesting information for the beginning and experienced camper. My 7 year old son and I enjoyed reading through sections of the book.

For those interested in Native Americans, the story of "The Ending of Dull Knife's Band" is a phenomenal account of a historical event that rarely makes the history books. I would encourage interested readers to read this section alone.

happy reading! :-)

This is a reprint of a book printed in the early 1900's by Ernest Thompson Seton. Seton had founded a youth group called "Woodcraft Indians". He later incorporated his ideas into the Boy Scouts of America.

This is not the type of book you sit and read from front to back. It is great to thumb through and see how things were done at that time. This was originally aimed at young boys from 11 years old and up. There is a lot of good information about campcraft, games and stories, in the book.

Along with this book, you should do some research online about the badge requirements for the Woodcraft Indians. It is very intriguing to find out what early scouts were required to do.

This is a reprint of a book printed in the early 1900's by Ernest Thompson Seton. Seton had founded a youth group called "Woodcraft Indians". He later incorporated his ideas into the Boy Scouts of America.

This is not the type of book you sit and read from front to back. It is great to thumb through and see how things were done at that time. This was originally aimed at young boys from 11 years old and up. There is a lot of good information about campcraft, games and stories, in the book.

Along with this book, you should do some research online about the badge requirements for the Woodcraft Indians. It is very intriguing to find out what early scouts were required to do.

This is a reprint of the 1921 edition of the Book of Woodcraft by Seton. It is delightful to have a commercial edition of this work available again, but I am somehwhat puzzled over the title change.

It is all here, almost everything that one would need to start an outdoor youth group. Details on camp setup, games, woodlands ethics and Seton's Blue Sky philosophy. Includes many sketches by Seton, probably the best wildlife artist of his era.

Ernest Seton has written a wonderful text to get lost in. The book could serve so many different people, from the young boy wanting to know the ways of the wild to the senior citizen who either wishes to broaden their knowledge of the forest. It would be a wonderful book to those people that wish to become 'instant experts' on surviving in the forest. The topics are broad: from how to identify trees to how to skin and tan different animals.

This is a quick read, and for under $10 it's a good book to share with your committee when you're planning a Future Search. It describes the process, the roles that will be played by various actors in the process, what to expect and what not to expect. To dissuade me of telling the committee that this was an Organizational Development technique, for example, the authors described the differences between O.D. and the Future Search. I would go ahead and buy "Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground," by the same authors, to get the complete picture with the details.

I found this book easy to follow and easy to understand. If you want to understand Future Search as a large group strategy, this book will be very helpful. By the time I finished the book, and it is a fast read, I felt that I had a strong understanding of Future Search and when it is to be applied.

No need to go any further. This the THE book to read if you are involved in planning or facilitating a future search. The authors anticipated all my questions and answered them in a clear, concise manner. The book is an excellent manual for anyone responsible for conducting future searches. Don't leave the present without it.

Weisbord and Janoff provide practical tools, advise and many decades of experience in organizational change and action in their "Future Search." As they say, a Future Search Conference is "simple, not easy" and provides a structured means for leaders to bring in the "whole system" into planning and action.

In this book, Marvin R. Weisbord and Sandra Janoff describe a three-day program to help organizations develop a future plan. Their conference is designed to unite groups of people from different areas of an organization so they can create a program together that they all support. Typically, the conference includes 50 to 70 people who review the past, explore the present environment, create future scenarios, identify common ground and make action plans. The program encourages dialogue and working together as peers.

Future Search suggests how you might organize this program yourself, from setting up the agenda to planning the logistics. Because the book is a specific, practical guide for a particular type of conference, it will primarily interest those leaders and managers who want to put on such a program. We at getAbstract recommend Future Search as a good hands-on tool for companies, non-profits, government agencies or other organizations that want to hold a future planning conference.

This book was truly amazing. It gave me (someone from ohio) a true insight about what lobstering is really about! The pictures are great and the story line very descriptive and intuitive. I would def. reccomend this book to anyone that has kids or no kids. Please buy.

My daughter and son enjoy this book and learned something about lobsters. We think the pictures are pretty incredible!

My son and I go to Maine for vacations. We picked up this book and have begun picking up lobster toys. He really loves it!

My 5 and 6 year olds absolutely love this book. This book is as close to lobstering my kids will probably ever get. In that regard, it is packed with useful information about how lobsters are caught and what other kinds of things end up in a lobster trap. This interesting thing about this book, aside from the lifelike illustrations, is that it tells the reader why some lobsters get tossed back (i.e. too small or have eggs attached). It shows the reader how the lobsterman measures the lobster to ensure it is not too small. A lesson in conservation rolled up into a delightful story. Buy this book. You and your children will NOT be disappointed. My kids have read this book about 6 times in 10 days. That's the kind of results you want to get kids reading.

This has to be one of the worst books on lobstering I have ever read. The information is poorly researched, and the quality of the illustrations are also, sadly, second rate. I have read in his biography that Mr. Pallotta was a lobster fisherman, but sadly he has done his fellow fisherman a grave diservice in writing this book...

I bought The Baffleds Parent's Guide To Coaching Youth Basketball and thought that the drill book might be interesting as well. Boy was I dissapointed. The drill book is nothing more than an attempt to extract more money from consumers like me. Readers beware--the coaching book is excellent ---the drill book is terrible.

Just out of curiosity, I would like to know the back ground on the person who reviewed this book named H.A. It is obvious that he or she did not have a background in education or youth developement. Having worked with over thousands of students I can safely say that H.A. doesn't have a clue on what kids can really understand. If it is over your head then you have no business trying to teach it to the kids. Feel free to reply or email..

As a director of youth basketball camps I found Dr. Garland's book priceless. There are few books written on space and movement like this one. You can never have enough drills to reinforce movement on and off the ball. The illustrations could help even the begginner level coach have a taste at success.
There are a great deal of inexperienced coaches and parents that could bennifit from this book. I use it and it works.

As a curriculum director of summer sports camps for Basketball I highly recommend this book to all coaches. It challenges players to learn proper techniques, but more importantly it challenges players to think about their decision making, and to understand concepts of vision and space. (Difficult for many, so lets help make it easier). The book is ideal for working with youth players, the philosophy behind the book and the drills are fantastic.

Basketball books I have read by the dozen. None like this one though. Jim Garland's approach to teaching the game is totally unique. How many times have you seen kids at basketball practices standing in lines waiting for their turn? How many times have you seen teams with one or two players who move around on offense while the others stand watching? These drills involve kids constantly in the skills and concepts of the game without ever waiting in lines. Garland's drills teach coaches how to get those players to move intelligently on the court, help teammates get the ball in good places, see open players, and how to play defense within a team concept. What's amazing is that the drills are so well thought out, they do the teaching for you. Most drills are a game within themselves but as players strive to "win" the drill, they are improving in their understanding of the very concept you were trying to get across. The descriptions are remarkably simple. The progressions are masterful. And the diagrams are extraordinarily user friendly. Garland's Baffled Parent's Guide to Great Basketball Drills is a must for any youth coach! 5 stars!

I bought this book hoping that I as a hobbyist I would get some insight on how real database programs look and work. I program exclusively in Visual Basic .Net and only care to use SQL Server 2000 at this time. So, the description mentioned using .Net and I thought I had found what I was looking for. I was wrong.

First, while some of the examples in the book use VB.Net, it is based on the beta version. A lot has changed since the beta versions, and this book really needs to reflect those changes.

Secondly, all of the examples use the old way of connecting to and working with the database, i.e., ADO. With .Net has come a new and more effective (in my opinion) way of handling database interactivity, which is ADO.Net. I have no need for the old way of doing things. To leave ADO.Net out of this book just seems lazy to me. This is my main disappointment.

Lastly, six chapters are devoted to using Access as a front end. This is why I believe the title is misleading. While many people use Access for this purpose, I do not and would have liked to know that one third of this book was devoted to this topic.

For the most part, this book is filled with a lot of examples and information. Unfortunately, it falls short with the newer .Net technologies. If you want to use up to date technologies, this book is probably not for you. Unless you want to take the time to port all of the code from ADO to ADO.Net and from beta coding standards to current standards. Otherwise, it might be a good investment.

This book is unbelievable! I had been looking for a book explaining stored procedures. I had bought four or five books on SQL Server but they turned out to be very disappointing: only one chapter on stored procedures and only examples that were less than convincing on the use of stored procedures.

This book shows you real life examples where stored procedures are used. I understood right away what other authors were trying to explain.

Mr. Buczek's book consists of small but complete real life applications. By using complete projects, we understand how and why using stored procedures.

But the book is not only about stored procedures; using defined functions and triggers are also used.

What makes this book stand-out among other books on SQL Server, is the coupling of SQL Server with a user interface: each applications use an interface: some of Mr. Buczek applications use VB6, others use VB.Net (beta 1: at that time VB.Net beta 2 had not been launched), others use Access and others use ASP pages.

This is the book you need if you are tired, as I am, to throw your money through the windows by buying computing books that are written by people who should never have written books at all.

As far as I am concerned, Mr. Buczek is the only person who desserves the right to write computer books. He is the only one who knows what he is doing.

The strength of this book is that is teaches through examples, and for someone like myself who knows a little about SQL and needs concrete examples to solidify understanding, this is an excellent resource. Mr. Buczek does an excellent job of breaking down the code in his examples and explaining what each line does. The book also has a good introduction through the first several chapters that help you get your feet wet if you have done little with SQL Server before.

I now posess five (5) of Mr. Buczek's books. In this book, as in all the rest, it remains evident that Greg has a genuine concern that the reader learn from his printed material and urges further learning by manipulating solutions that he has presented.

Chapter 1 does a great job of reviewing the basics of working with SQL Server and the SQL Server Enterprise Manager. As a programmer, I have designed an application using VB as the front end to SQL Server. Chapter 3 provided invaluable information.

I found the Solutions provided by Mr. Buczek as real-world, and code examples were easily transposed to meet my programming needs.

The Visual Basic Quick Reference in Appendix A and the T-SQL Language Reference in Appendix B are more than worth the price of this book. I will be eagerly waiting for the next release from Mr. Buczek.

I purchased this book more for the quick and dirty SQL applications than for the detailed 'How-To'. Unfortunately some code examples were created with a very early version of Visual Studio.NET. The code is now obsolete, so you must spend a fair amount of time repairing the code and bringing it up to the latest VisualStudio.NET conventions. Even then you might not get it working. I wish the publisher would make code corrections and errata available on their web site, but they do not.

This is a good book with lots of details. I wish I have more time to study it.
Ed

The good: The book quickly dispenses what you need to know for the exam, then tells you what you need to survive in the real world. I.e. Powershell and scripting. Coming from a 20,000+ user environment it is refreshing to see a book actually written for the "real world".

The bad: I'm only through the first four chapters, and oddly enough I find myself actually doing the examples. To my surprise, about one in ten commands is flat out wrong. Parameters are specified that aren't part of the program being executed (p.122), PowerShell commands that are typo'd bad enough to throw errors that would be undecipherable to most people (p.127), etc.

And no, despite the fact that they show it about 20x, you cannot use %username% from the command line to set a variable with dsmod as they show it, since it uses the logged in users' username (the admin running the command).

If they would have proof read and tested these commands before throwing them in the book it likely would have raised by rating of this book to a five. However, it's hard to overlook such glaringly obvious and *frequent* errors. I hope the other books in this series aren't as bad in this department.

This book is an excellent resource to assist in preparing for test 70-640. Well written and very understandable. Delievery of the product was also great, and actually MUCH faster than I had anticipated.

The copy of the book I received on July 2nd does not include evaluation of windows 2008. Could be downloaded but not included on the ~50mb CD. CD has 295+ study questions and an ebook.

I recently recieved this Microsoft Press training Kit for Exam: 70-640,
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-640): Configuring Windows Server 2008 Active Directory

After reading through its over 860 pages of information, I was equiped to pass the Certification Exam. Although it is an excellent tool for preparing for the test, there are quite a few errors in the text. The book seemed rushed, as if the writers were trying to meet a deadline. There are many references to outside sources for concept understanding throughout the book. Some of the answers in the back do not match the questions in the lessons from each chapter. A few mispelled/misplaced words, and some information, such as on Page 280 which states that you can troubleshoot RSoP with Gpupdate.exe is just not correct. The statement should say Gpresult.exe instead. Nothing that a little more proofreading would not have solved.

All in all, the book was easy to grasp. I was happy overall with the content supplied by the curriculum. Once the errors are resolved, I feel that this will be an excellent source for 70-640 enthusiast.

My choice was narrowed down between the old Microsoft Office 2000 Step by Step Learning Kit with CD Rom, Number 0735605084 or the New Learning Kit, part number 0735610908 (Feb 16, 2000 release). After reading various reviews, which didn't tell me very much about this, I eventually spoke to someone at Microsoft Press. He said at that the new Interactive Learning Kit was less expensive because market research had indicated a target price, but that it had virtually the same content (and exactly the same CD)as the more expensive version. The New Learning Kit is now also certified for M. O. U. S. ( Microsoft Office User Specialist) training. It seems the therefore that if you are in the market for the Interactive Learning Kit, the new version is the one to go for. A word of warning, when choosing between the four Step by Step books for Office 2000, make certain that the book you choose covers your software package. If, for instance, you need to cover the Small Businesses module, you should buy the Interactive (Starts Here) book. No. 0735605068.

My choice was narrowed down between the old Microsoft office 2000 step by step learning kit with CD rom, Number 0735605084 or the New learning kit, part number 0735610908. After reading various reviews, which didn't teach me very much, I eventually spoke to someone at Microsoft Press. He said at that the new interactive learning Kit was less expensive because market research had indicated a target price, but that it had virtually the same content (and exactly the same CD)as the more expensive version. The New Learning Kit is now also certified for M. O. U. S. ( Microsoft Office User Specialist) training. It seems the therefore that if you are in the market for the interactive learning kit, the new version is the one to go for. A word of warning, when choosing between the 4 Step by Step books for office 2000, make certain that the book you choose, covers a your software package. If, for instance, you need to to cover the Small Businesses module, you should buy the Interactive (Starts Here) book. No. 0735605068.

This is an excellent resource to learn and practice the five major Microsoft Office 2000 applications especially of you don't have any or the entire suite. It isn't perfect but it helps you to get through many of the tasks. Unfortunately, the practice version of the Microsoft Office in the Learning Kit only allows you to work only on the practice lessons and won't allow you to try variations. In other words, you will have to work on full versions of each application to see if you can apply various techniques with real information.

I am very happy that I invested my money in this product because I have only been learning with the Microsoft Office2000 for a week and have already learned so much because it helps you through the whole learning process step...by...step.This is in my opinion a great training tool.

As good as this set (Book and CD) is, Microsoft realized it was overpriced and rereleased it as ISBN 0-7356-1090-8. List 29.99 40% cheaper. Buy that one instead