Books about Meaningful from Amazon.com

In 1986 Dr. David Snowdon, one of the world’s leading experts on Alzheimer’s disease, embarked on a revolutionary scientific study that would forever change the way we view aging—and ultimately living. Dubbed the “Nun Study” because it involves a unique population of 678 Catholic sisters, this remarkable long-term research project has made headlines worldwide with its provocative discoveries.
Yet Aging with Grace is more than a groundbreaking health and science book. It is the inspiring human story of these remarkable women—ranging in age from 74 to 106—whose dedication to serving others may help all of us live longer and healthier lives.

Totally accessible, with fascinating portraits of the nuns and the scientists who study them, Aging with Grace also offers a wealth of practical findings:

• Why building linguistic ability in childhood may protect against Alzheimer’s
• Which ordinary foods promote longevity and healthy brain function
• Why preventing strokes and depression is key to avoiding Alzheimer’s
• What role heredity plays, and why it’s never too late to start an exercise program
• How attitude, faith, and community can add years to our lives

A prescription for hope, Aging with Grace shows that old age doesn’t have to mean an inevitable slide into illness and disability; rather it can be a time of promise and productivity, intellectual and spiritual vigor—a time of true grace..
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Integrating Technology for Meaningful Learning, 5/e, provides a unique, inviting approach to introducing the use of technology in the K-12 classroom. Offering an abundance of authentic, hands-on projects, the text provides future classroom teachers with the essential information and motivation to use technology as an everyday tool. The authors strike an important balance between practical applications and theoretical issues so that teachers can concentrate on the connections between learning tasks and the mental activities of students. This new edition offers expanded coverage of the Internet as a tool for communication and inquiry and includes updated coverage of all emergent technologies..
Price: $50.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As a primer on living the good life, few books compete with How to Practice, another profound offering from the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Westerners may be confused by the book's title, assuming that it focuses solely on Buddhist meditation and prayer techniques. Though it does address meditation and prayer, at its core this is a book that demonstrates how day-to-day living can be a spiritual practice. There are two ways to create happiness:

The first is external. By obtaining better clothes, better shelter, and better friends we can find a certain measure of happiness and satisfaction. The second is through mental development, which yields inner happiness. However, these two approaches are not equally viable. External happiness cannot last long without its counterpart.... However, if you have peace of mind you can find happiness even under the most difficult circumstances.

As he has in previous books (An Open Heart, The Art of Happiness), the Dalai Lama reminds us that developing peace of mind means paying attention to our daily attitudes and choices as well as taking the time to meditate and be prayerful. The six-part book covers Buddhist meditation techniques and visualization exercises as well as daily thoughts and actions that foster morality and wisdom. --Gail Hudson.
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Grounded in constructivist teachings, this book will help teachers demonstrate ways that technology can be used to engage and support meaningful learning Much different than the last edition, the 3rd edition of this popular text is now organized around learning processes that engage and support different learning activities such as investigating, exploring, writing, modeling, community buildiing, communicating, designing, visualizing, and assessing. Rather than the reader learning how to use specific technologies this book demonstrates for the reader how learners can use different technologies for meaningful learning. PreK-12 preservice & Inservice teachers.
Price: $36.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This study of ordinary families and how they talk to their very young children is no ordinary study at all. Betty Hart and Todd Risley wanted to know why, despite best efforts in preschool programs to equalize opportunity, children from low-income homes remain well behind their more economically advantaged peers years later in school. Their painstaking study began by recording each month - for 2-1/2 years - one full hour of every word spoken at home between parent and child in 42 families, categorized as professional, working class, or welfare families. Years of coding and analyzing every utterance in 1,318 transcripts followed. Rare is a database of this quality. "Remarkable," says Assistant Secretary of Education Grover (Russ) Whitehurst, of the findings: By age 3, the recorded spoken vocabularies of the children from the professional families were larger than those of the parents in the welfare families. Between professional and welfare parents, there was a difference of almost 300 words spoken per hour. Extrapolating this verbal interaction to a year, a child in a professional family would hear 11 million words while a child in a welfare family would hear just 3 million. The implications for society are staggering: Hart and Risley's follow-up studies at age 9 show that the large differences in the amount of children's language experience were tightly linked to large differences in child outcomes. And yet the implications are encouraging, too. As the authors conclude their preface to the 2002 printing of Meaningful Differences, "the most important aspect to evaluate in child care settings for very young children is the amount of talk actually going on, moment by moment, between children and their caregivers." By giving children positive interactions and experiences with adults who take the time to teach vocabulary, oral language concepts, and emergent literacy concepts, children should have a better chance to succeed at school.
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Meaningful or meaningless?Purposeful or pointless?When we look at nature, whether at our living earth or into deepest space, what do we find?In stark contrast to contemporary claims that the world is meaningless, Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt reveal a cosmos charged with both meaning and purpose. Their journey begins with Shakespeare and ranges through Euclid's geometry, the fine-tuning of the laws of physics, the periodic table of the elements, the artistry of ordinary substances like carbon and water, the intricacy of biological organisms, and the irreducible drama of scientific exploration itself.Along the way, Wiker and Witt fashion a robust argument from evidence in nature, one that rests neither on religious presuppositions nor on a simplistic view of nature as the best of all possible worlds. In their exploration of the cosmos, Wiker and Witt find all the challenges and surprises, all of the mystery and elegance one expects from a work of genius..
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Available again in a freshly redesigned edition, The Thank You Book teaches you what to say and how to say it in more unique and clever ways than you've ever imagined .
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New Edition of Bestseller!

This second edition puts even more tools for writing teacher evaluations at your fingertips!

Now you can write fact-filled, performance-based, high-quality teacher evaluations, quickly and efficiently, even when you are crunched for time.

The updated edition includes even more sample evaluations, forms, performance proficiency statements, and a timesaving CD-ROM. In Part One, performance statements are grouped under five standard areas of teaching competencies:

• Proficiency with Curriculum
• Evaluation of Student Growth
• Preparation and Readiness
• Instructional Performance
• Interaction/Climate

Suggested Pats on the Back following each section help you reinforce your teachers’ good work. Vocabulary Aids also help you select the exact words to customize your review.

Part Two offers easy-to-reproduce forms and sample evaluations, with a new section of statements specifically for commenting on the quality of writing/planning in teachers’ plan books, roll books, and homework assignments formulated for the students.

Other useful sections include:

• Common Areas of Concern, with Suggested Remedies
• Evaluation Organizer to record observed classroom practices in the quickest, most efficient way
• Sample Written Evaluations let you capture the most subtle aspects of observed teaching performance
• Cross-Reference of Key Terms gives a quick way to identify and find statements using the alphabetized lists of words and phrases
• Ready-to-copy forms include Record of Evaluations, Checklist of Basic Documentation and/or Conditions, a Pre-Post Conference Form, and an Informal Observation Form 

CD-ROM is PC and Mac compatible and not sold separately.

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