Active Books

As an environmental educator I am always looking for new ways to express ecological concepts to children, as well as find evaluative techniques to track the learning of my students. This book introduces useful self-evaluative techniques to help the student track his learning and to chart the future course of inquiry.

Having been familar with George Hein(one of the book's coauthors) as one of the leading constructivist educators in non-traditional environments ( science centers, museums, nature centers, etc), I was interested in the text, and how I might apply it to the after-school enrichment program I am currently conducting.

The book has given me a few new tools to use in the evaluation of the students' learning, and some ability to incorporate those techniques/results in the final analysis to the grant committee, to prove to them that their money was well spent.

Admittedly, some of the techniques employed are better suited to smaller class sizes because of the time they will require to be fully reviewed and evaluated by the teacher. Nevertheless, even considering the added time component, the tools/techniques offered are worth employing because of the "buy in" the students gain in charting their learning/academic future.

Though you may not find every technique applicable to your classroom situation, you may find several that help you benchmark the progress of your students more usefully than standard testing, without completely "bucking the traditional system".

It's a good read, and worth the expense on an educator's budget.

One of the authors, Prof. Seto, has been leading active control technology development in Japan for more than 20 years. The latter half of this book is full of his experiences applied to tall buildings and long span bridegs. Illustrations of these successfull applications are good part of this book. Unfortunately, applications to motor vehicles and aerospace structures are not disclosed. The theories introduced in this book is relatrively easy to understand even for college students. The reason may be because the theory the authors used is a little bit classic. So, if you like mathematics, then this book is not for you. However, if you are engineers who seek real things, you should read this book.

The concept of this British publication is so obvious I wonder why there isn't a US counterpart. It is, essentially, a Criminal Defense for Dummies for the novice (or experienced) lawyer covering everything outside of the actual courtroom. Topics include going to the police station (discovery issues, what's in a typical police file), disclosures from the prosecutor (what's required, what to ask for, what to do when you don't get something), mandatory disclosures to the prosecutor (different in the UK from the US, but quite interesting), how to analyze statements to for discovery and cross-exam purposes, how to interview witnesses (yours, the prosecutor's, and alibi witnesses), and lots of other useful topics. About a third of the book is specific to UK readers and of limited use here -- the rest has a series of valuable insights for attorneys and attorney-trainers.

Worth reading, tho hard to find and a bit expensive to import.

My specialty is Active Directory, so my expectations might be a bit high. This book is vitage 2003 information now, but it is pretty good. The target audience is administrators and consultants. There isn't a ton of theory in here and there is a lot of practice (application) of the concepts. Still, I wasn't blown away by the information and I didn't find it unusually good. This is also not a huge reference book, like Boswell or Minasi turn out, but that is partly because the subject stays focused on Active Directory (not covering the entire server). This is not something you would want to use for certification exam preparation.

I found this book to be perfect for the NT Administrator that understand the basic security concepts of Windows NT architecture, but needs to implement Windows 2003 Active Directory into his or her organization. It was easy to understand, well documented.

The book also adds a few chapters on some different enterprise solutions for anti-virus, backup, etc. without giving you the feeling that you have really navigated away from what you paid for. The author places these chapters in the back of the book and does not integrate the information with the rest of the book, so you can skip anything not of interest to you.

This is book is not designed to be certification preparation material, but would be a great book to read for an introduction to Active Directory before everyone attempts to confuse the heck out of stuff.

My only complaint is that is appears that "By the Numbers Publications" does not have anything else published like this or by this author.

I bought this book just for self-study, so I haven't done the exercises and discussions in group. Anyway, I found the book good.

I think those exercises and discussions are very constructive. It gives students chance to talk about the topic before they listen. And the book covers diverse topics, some of them are very interesting (e.g. reflexology) and some are very eccentric. (e.g. the flat earth) In addition, each chapter also contains note to remind teachers that the vocabulary, grammar and slang students will come across in this chapter. They are very useful in improving listening skill or even enjoying listening English!

At last, however, the listening tasks are a bit too easy, since people speak slowly with unusual tone.

In all, it a good book and I give 4 stars!!

ISBN 1412702038 - This pocket-sized board book, geared toward teaching your child his/her early vocabulary, surprised me. With so many "first word" books out there, the idea has begun to seem over-done and I wasn't expecting much from this one. It's much better than I expected.

Each pair of facing pages has two images and their names - "apple" and "truck", for example. The second page of each pair has a lift-able flap and under the flap, the two words and images are combined - "The truck carries the apple." Some combinations are quite funny and catch you a little by surprise - "The beans are in the sock." comes to mind.

Any series called "Active Minds" really ought to be a good thing, and this one is. The sturdy board book pages are great, the size of the book makes it perfect for travel and the flaps are a nice novelty that lifts First Words just a little above the rest. The flaps are, as always, a little flimsier than the pages, but don't appear to be easily torn. The photographs, from George Siede and Donna Preis, are nice and bright; the only complaint is that the egg is on a white background and blends in a little bit. What a nice, fun way to expand your kid's vocabulary.

- AnnaLovesBooks

It's easy to take public radio for granted, but the story of the first listener-sponsored public radio station (and network) shows that challenges to its survival were formidable. Established in 1949 by pacifists with seed money from wealthy Bay Area Quakers, KPFA in Berkeley began airing progressive public affairs and arts programs and soon faced stiff resistance from the FCC, FBI, and Congress. This short (179 page) book, written for general audiences, focuses on the first three decades of this "brash experiment," including the expansion of Pacifica radio to include stations in Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., and Houston. In passing, we also hear about Margaret Mead, W.E.B. DuBois, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Pauline Kael, Seymour Hersh, Carey McWilliams, Alexander Meiklejohn, and other voices of dissent and criticism aired on Pacifica. Very worthwhile.

Good book for the price and it is able to be utilized in ESL classes!!!

The book is inteligent for students and academics