PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Developing and improving your knowledge is a must for any profession - teaching is no exception. With pedagogy evolving every day with new practices and technology, compiled are some books that every teacher must read to get better at their profession.

Mindful Assessment

by Lee Watanabe-Crockett, Andrew Churches

It is time to rethink the relationship between teaching and learning and assess the crucial skills students need to succeed in the 21st century. The authors assert that educators must focus assessment on mindfulness and feedback for improvement, framing assessment around six fluencies students need to cultivate. The book provides scenarios, lessons, activities, and assessment rubrics.

Teaching With the Brain in Mind

by Eric Jensen

In easy to understand, engaging language, Jensen provides a basic orientation to the brain and its various systems and explains how they affect learning. After discussing what parents and educators can do to get children’s brains in good shape for school, Jensen goes on to explore topics such as motivation, critical thinking skills, optimal educational environments, emotions, and memory. He offers fascinating insights on a number of specific issues. Jensen’s repeated message to educators is simple: You have far more influence on students’ brains than you realise - and you have an obligation to take advantage of the incredible revelations that science is providing.

Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess

After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavour can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishments.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

by Carol Dweck

After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavour can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed.

Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishments.

The Innovator’s Mindsett by George Couros

In this book, George Couros encourages teachers and administrators to empower their learners to wonder, explore--and to become forward-thinking leaders. If we want innovative students, we need innovative educators. In other words, innovation begins with you. Ultimately, innovation is not about a skill set: it’s about a mindset. The traditional system of education requires students to hold their questions and compliantly stick to the scheduled curriculum. But our job as educators is to provide new and better opportunities for our students. It’s time to recognise that compliance doesn’t foster innovation, encourage critical thinking, or inspire creativity--and those are the skills our students need to succeed.

What Connected Educators Do Differently

by Todd Whitaker, Jeffrey Zoul and Jimmy Casas

Todd Whitaker, Jeffrey Zoul, and Jimmy Casas are widely acclaimed experts on teaching and are pioneers in the education Twitterverse, and now they are sharing their best practices. In this book, 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 will 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 customising your professional development in this way, you will be able to learn what you want, how you want, when you want. Best of all, you will become energised and inspired by all the great ideas out there and how you can contribute, benefiting both you and your students.

How We Learn by

Benedict Carey

In this book, award-winning science reporter Benedict Carey sifts through decades of education research and landmark studies to uncover the truth about how our brains absorb and retain information. What he discovers is that, from the moment we are born, we are all learning quickly, efficiently, and automatically; but in our zeal to systematise the process we have ignored valuable, naturally enjoyable learning tools like forgetting, sleeping, and daydreaming. Is a dedicated desk in a quiet room really the best way to study? Can altering your routine improve your recall? Are there times when distraction is good? Is repetition necessary? Carey’s search for answers to these questions yields a wealth of strategies that make learning more a part of our everyday lives—and less of a chore.

With the advancement of digital learning technologies, knowledge sharing for the purpose of education and training has accelerated to a point we have never experienced before. The availability of powerful delivery tools and the intentions and interests for sharing knowledge with greater audiences are the major driving forces behind the growth of Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs. While there are many benefits to MOOCs, they currently face several challenges. Design, development, implementation and evaluation of open and distributed learning systems (e.g., MOOCs) require thoughtful analysis and investigation. But most people have no idea how or where to begin. Khan’s E-Learning Framework provides a comprehensive structure for analysing the issues involving the design, development, implementation and evaluation of e-learning initiatives.

A New Culture of Learning

by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown

Effective, intentional teaching begins with a strong set of beliefs, but even the best teachers - including Debbie Miller - struggle to make sure that their classroom practice consistently reflects their core convictions. In Teaching with Intention, Debbie shares her process of defining beliefs, aligning practice, and taking action to ensure that children are the true beneficiaries of her teaching. As Peter Johnston writes, “Through this book, we have Debbie’s teaching mind on loan. She engages us in the details of teaching life from inside her mind, showing the thinking behind her teaching and the consequences of her actions.”

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in an age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

In The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau tells you exactly how many dollars his group of unexpected entrepreneurs required to get their projects up and running; what these individuals did in the first weeks and months to generate significant cash; some of the key mistakes they made along the way, and the crucial insights that made the business stick. This is a great glimpse into what is possible with a small investment, for people who have absolutely no experience in being an entrepreneur or online business owner.

In this book, Guy Kawasaki brings two decades of experience as one of business’s most original and irreverent strategists to offer the essential guide for anyone starting anything. From raising money to hiring the right people, from defining your positioning to creating a brand, from creating buzz to buzzing the competition, from managing a board to fostering a community, this book will guide you through an adventure that’s more art than science—the art of the start.

While there are many books to read for young, aspiring entrepreneurs, here are 10 of the best books to give young entrepreneurs a dose of inspiration and get started.

The purpose of this book is to give you a series of ideas, methods, strategies, and techniques that you can use immediately to make more sales, faster and easier than ever before. This is a useful & practical book on all the key things you need to know when it comes to sales, persuasion & consumer psychology. Brian Tracy’s ideas are both easy to understand, practical and well thought through.

10

Books Teachers Can Use To Foster General

Dale Carnegie’s timeless classic is a book that is packed with rock-solid advice that has carried thousands of now famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. As relevant as ever before, this book’s principles endure, and will help the reader achieve maximum potential in the complex and competitive modern age.

Learn the six ways to make people like you, the twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking, and the nine ways to change people without arousing resentment.

Robert T. Kiyosaki developed his unique economic perspective from two very different influences - his two fathers. One father (Robert’s real father) was a highly educated man but fiscally poor. The other father was the father of Robert’s best friend - that Dad was an eighth-grade drop-out who became a self-made multi-millionaire. This clear, well-written, and thought-provoking book is not just about money. It’s about how we are taught to think; how we are programmed by schools, family, and friends and the steps we need to take to reprogram our minds.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, the author reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow highly is highly recommended if you’re interested in why human beings behave the way they behave and will transform the way you think about thinking.

Gary Vaynerchuck is widely considered a web celebrity and social media expert. He used social media and online video (WineLibrary TV) to gain incredible exposure and propel his wine business to unprecedented success. In Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, readers will learn how to harness the power of the Internet to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. The book has some great tips regarding social media and personal branding.

Any organization can explain what it does; some can explain how they do it; but very few can clearly articulate why. WHY is not money or profit—those are always results. WHY does your organization exist? WHY does it do the things it does? WHY do customers really buy from one company or another? WHY are people loyal to some leaders, but not others?

In a praiseworthy effort to distill some of the most important lessons of entrepreneurship, Kevin D. Johnson, shares the essential beliefs, characteristics, and habits of elite entrepreneurs. Smart and insightful, The Entrepreneur Mind: 100 Essential Beliefs, Characteristics, and Habits of Elite Entrepreneurs is the ultimate primer on how to think like an entrepreneur.