Making It Better

More than 75 empowering and healing classroom activities Children living with uncertainty and insecurity often have difficulty focusing on learning. They might demonstrate disrespectful or defiant behaviors, act out, or act with aggression. As an educator, you may provide the only stability in their otherwise turbulent world. Making It Better explains trauma-informed education, an approach that recognizes the impact of traumatic stress on children and its effect on the growing brain, and applies the latest neurological research to teaching methods, disciplinary policies, and interactions to support grieving children. This book responds to the learning and behavioral needs of children who have experienced traumatic events or toxic stress—such as natural disasters, community violence, or abuse or neglect within the child’s familial relations—and includes a collection of activities and strategies to help children heal and feel empowered. Distressed children need absolute emotional security and an opportunity to engage in healing activities. With your help, children can begin to build resiliency and find renewed hope for the future. Barbara Oehlberg, MA, is an education and child trauma consultant who has presented for many organizations throughout the country. With a career that has spanned many levels, Barbara has spent more than 30 years making a positive impact on children’s lives.

Thomas J Watson Sr’s motto for IBM was THINK, and for more than a century, that one little word worked overtime. In Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company, journalists Kevin Maney, Steve Hamm, and Jeffrey M. O’Brien mark the Centennial of IBM’s founding by examining how IBM has distinctly contributed to the evolution of technology and the modern corporation over the past 100 years. The authors offer a fresh analysis through interviews of many key figures, chronicling the Nobel Prize-winning work of the company’s research laboratories and uncovering rich archival material, including hundreds of vintage photographs and drawings. The book recounts the company’s missteps, as well as its successes. It captures moments of high drama – from the bet-the-business gamble on the legendary System/360 in the 1960s to the turnaround from the company’s near-death experience in the early 1990s. The authors have shaped a narrative of discoveries, struggles, individual insights and lasting impact on technology, business and society. Taken together, their essays reveal a distinctive mindset and organizational culture, animated by a deeply held commitment to the hard work of progress. IBM engineers and scientists invented many of the building blocks of modern information technology, including the memory chip, the disk drive, the scanning tunneling microscope (essential to nanotechnology) and even new fields of mathematics. IBM brought the punch-card tabulator, the mainframe and the personal computer into the mainstream of business and modern life. IBM was the first large American company to pay all employees salaries rather than hourly wages, an early champion of hiring women and minorities and a pioneer of new approaches to doing business--with its model of the globally integrated enterprise. And it has had a lasting impact on the course of society from enabling the US Social Security System, to the space program, to airline reservations, modern banking and retail, to many of the ways our world today works. The lessons for all businesses – indeed, all institutions – are powerful: To survive and succeed over a long period, you have to anticipate change and to be willing and able to continually transform. But while change happens, progress is deliberate. IBM – deliberately led by a pioneering culture and grounded in a set of core ideas – came into being, grew, thrived, nearly died, transformed itself... and is now charting a new path forward for its second century toward a perhaps surprising future on a planetary scale.

Sustainable building from the ground up - the pros and cons of the latest green and natural materials and technologies From foundation to finish, a wealth of information is available on sustainable construction methods-entire volumes have been published on individual green and natural building techniques. But with so many different ideas to choose from, there is no single resource that allows an owner or builder to quickly and objectively compare the merits of each system for their particular project. Making Better Buildings cuts through the hype and provides the unvarnished facts about the upsides and downsides of the most widely discussed materials and technologies. Drawing on the real-world experiences of designer/builders, this comparative guide systematically and comprehensively examines each approach in terms of: Cost, sourcing, labor intensity, and ease of construction Energy efficiency, embodied energy, and environmental impacts Availability/accessibility Viable applications and future potential. Each chapter is rounded out by a chart which summarizes the material in a quick and accessible manner. Whether you are an owner preparing to build a green or natural home, or a conventional contractor determined to integrate sustainable alternatives into your existing construction practices, this up-to-the minute resource will help you make the best decisions for your project, while meeting your energy, efficiency, budgetary, and site-specific needs.

A radical reassessment of how we can most effectively help others by a rising star of philosophy and leading social entrepreneur. 'A surprising and often counterintuitive look at the best ways to make a difference . . . MacAskill is that rarest of beasts: a do-gooder who uses his head more than his heart.' SUNDAY TIMES Most of us want to make a difference. We donate to charity, buy Fairtrade coffee, or try to cut down on our carbon emissions. Rarely do we know if we're really helping, and despite our best intentions, our actions can have ineffective - and sometimes downright harmful - outcomes. Confronting this problem, William MacAskill developed the concept of effective altruism, a practical, data-driven approach which shows that each of us has the power to do an astonishing amount of good, given the right information. His conclusions are often surprising; by examining the charities we give to, the goods we buy and the careers we pursue, Doing Good Better is a fascinating and original guide which shows how, through simple actions, you can improve thousands of lives - including your own. 'A data nerd after my own heart.' BILL GATES 'Required reading for anyone interested in making the world better.' STEVEN LEVITT, co-author of Freakonomics 'Effective altruism - efforts that actually help people rather than making you feel good or helping you show off - is one of the great new ideas of the 21st century. Doing Good Better is the definitive guide to this exciting new movement.' STEVEN PINKER, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature

With a foreword by teen Colombian American climate justice activist Jamie Margolin, this fun and empowering guide to making the world a better place is packed with inspiring ideas and tips for kids who want to know how to make a difference. Full of positive encouragement to find something you're passionate about and how to get started on making a big difference through small actions, this brilliant factbook for kids is a treasure trove of information and great advice. There's a lot that can be changed by just one person if you know what to do. If you are a kid with big dreams and a passion for what is right, you just might be a world-changer in the making! Through ideas as small as creating a neighborhood lending library to as important as public speaking and how to talk about politics, How to Make a Better World is a practical guide to activism for children. Well-written and divided into sections on You, Community, Environment, and more, this educational book helps children to look at what they might like to achieve, and the logical approach makes it easy to navigate if you want to tie topics up with school projects. Brightly illustrated inclusive art makes this factbook as visually appealing as its message. You can easily jump around without any loss of comprehension and dip in for short or longer periods. Learn about tricky social interactions like friendship fallouts, or bullying and how to maneuver them, or find out how to go about creating activist campaigns to tackle climate change or social injustice. If kids are to think positive thoughts and be part of movements for positive change, they need to be encouraged to do it. This book is full of wonderful facts about the world, presenting such positivity as cool, sensible, exciting, and achievable. The perfect starter book to activism for kids. Make A Change - Change The World! If you want to create a better world that is equally awesome for everyone, this book is for you. It's packed with tips for how to change the world, one step at a time. You could be an amazing environmental campaigner or a fantastic equal rights champion. Anyone has the power to make a change. Start today, and who knows where your mission to make a better world will lead! Authored by Keilly Swift, the Managing Editor of First News, an award-winning weekly newspaper for children. This kid's educational book teaches children about injustices of the world in a positive way covering topics like: - Finding your cause, discrimination, and spotting fake news - Conservation success and the plastic problem - Animal activism and green living

This work recommends a simple yet profound shift to another decision-making technique: alternatives assessment. Instead of asking how much of a hazardous activity is safe, alternatives assessment asks how we can avoid or minimize damage.

* Our summary is short, simple and pragmatic. It allows you to have the essential ideas of a big book in less than 30 minutes. By reading this summary, you will discover how to make better decisions more efficiently. You will also discover how to : be more confident about yourself; avoid frustration from making the wrong choice; seize more opportunities; find solutions to difficult problems; improve your life. How do you make a decision? The question may seem pointless, since deciding seems simple. In reality, making a good decision is a skill that is never learned, yet it is one of the most useful. Take your life, for example: it is the result of the thousands of choices, big and small, that you have made over the years. Perhaps you regret some of them; perhaps you are proud of others. Either way, you are destined to be faced with decisions throughout your life, and that must never leave room for arbitrariness. "Smart Choices" brings together more than 100 years of psychological research on the best ways to make decisions: reading it will save you from frustration and bad choices. Master the art of decision making! *Buy now the summary of this book for the modest price of a cup of coffee!