internet & education

Barron's TOEFL iBT Internet-Based Test 2008 12th Edition with CD-ROM

The TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) is now being offered as an internet-based test, or iBT, and the new edition of Barron’s TOEFL manual and accompanying software have been completely revised and updated to reflect the new format. The manual presents seven full-length model TOEFL iBT tests with explanations or examples for all questions, including sample essays and speaking responses. The author also offers general orientation to the new TOEFL iBT, as well as a review of academic skills, which include note taking, paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing. There is also a review of language skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The optional CD-ROM presents seven on-screen TOEFL iBT exams that simulate actual test conditions and provide automatic scoring.

Effective Java Programming Language Guide

Written for the working Java developer, Joshua Bloch's Effective Java Programming Language Guide provides a truly useful set of over 50 best practices and tips for writing better Java code. With plenty of advice from an indisputable expert in the field, this title is sure to be an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to get more out of their code.

As a veteran developer at Sun, the author shares his considerable insight into the design choices made over the years in Sun's own Java libraries (which the author acknowledges haven't always been perfect). Based on his experience working with Sun's best minds, the author provides a compilation of 57 tips for better Java code organized by category. Many of these ideas will let you write more robust classes that better cooperate with built-in Java APIs. Many of the tips make use of software patterns and demonstrate an up-to-the-minute sense of what works best in today's design. Each tip is clearly introduced and explained with code snippets used to demonstrate each programming principle.

Early sections on creating and destroying objects show you ways to make better use of resources, including how to avoid duplicate objects. Next comes an absolutely indispensable guide to implementing "required" methods for custom classes. This material will help you write new classes that cooperate with old ones (with advice on implementing essential requirements like the equals() and hashCode() methods).

The author has a lot to say about class design, whether using inheritance or composition. Tips on designing methods show you how to create understandable, maintainable, and robust classes that can be easily reused by others on your team. Sections on mapping C code (like structures, unions, and enumerated types) onto Java will help C programmers bring their existing skills to Sun's new language. Later sections delve into some general programming tips, like using exceptions effectively. The book closes with advice on using threads and synchronization techniques, plus some worthwhile advice on object serialization.

Whatever your level of Java knowledge, this title can make you a more effective programmer. Wisely written, yet never pompous or doctrinaire, the author has succeeded in packaging some really valuable nuggets of advice into a concise and very accessible guidebook that arguably deserves a place on most any developer's bookshelf. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Best practices and tips for Java
• Creating and destroying objects (static factory methods, singletons, avoiding duplicate objects and finalizers)
• Required methods for custom classes (overriding equals(), hashCode(), toString(), clone(), and compareTo() properly)
• Hints for class and interface design (minimizing class and member accessibility, immutability, composition versus inheritance, interfaces versus abstract classes, preventing subclassing, static versus nonstatic classes)
• C constructs in Java (structures, unions, enumerated types, and function pointers in Java)
• Tips for designing methods (parameter validation, defensive copies, method signatures, method overloading, zero-length arrays, hints for Javadoc comments)
• General programming advice (local variable scope, using Java API libraries, avoiding float and double for exact comparisons, when to avoid strings, string concatenation, interfaces and reflection, avoid native methods, optimizing hints, naming conventions)
• Programming with exceptions (checked versus run-time exceptions, standard exceptions, documenting exceptions, failure-capture information, failure atomicity)
• Threading and multitasking (synchronization and scheduling hints, thread safety, avoiding thread groups)
• Serialization (when to implement Serializable, the readObject(), and readResolve() methods)

Are you looking for a concise book packed with insight and wisdom not found elsewhere? Need to really understand the Java programming language; that is, really understand it? Do you want to write code that is clear, correct, robust, and reusable? Look no further! The book you are holding will provide you with this and many other benefits you may not even know you were looking for. Become a more effective programmer.

Featuring fifty-seven valuable rules of thumb, Effective Java- Programming Language Guide contains working solutions to the programming challenges most developers encounter every day. Offering comprehensive descriptions of techniques used by the experts who developed the Java platform, the book reveals what to do--and what not to do--in order to produce clear, robust, and efficient code.

Each rule appears in the form of a short, stand-alone essay offering insight, code examples, and "war stories" from this uniquely qualified author. The essays include specific advice and insights into the subtleties of the language and are illustrated with exceptional code examples. Throughout the book, common language idioms and design patterns are examined and insightful and enlightening tips and techniques are provided.

Coverage includes:

• Customary and effective language usage that is saturated with expert advice in a concise, readable, and easy-to-access format.
• Patterns, antipatterns, and idioms to help you get the most out of the Java platform.
• Commonly misunderstood subtleties of the language and its libraries: how to avoid the traps and pitfalls.
• Focus on the language and its most fundamental libraries: java.lang, java.util, and, to a lesser extent, java.io.
• Detailed coverage of serialization, including practical advice that is not available elsewhere.

Appealing to a broad spectrum of the programming community, Effective Java- Programming Language Guide presents the most practical, authoritative guidelines available for writing efficient, well-designed programs for the Java platform.

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms

"We need a solid book explaining and illustrating and letting teachers know about these powerful tools. This book meets the need in an awesome way!"
-Mike Muir, Director
Maine Center for Meaningful Engaged Learning

"This author is a gem! It startles me to be 'pulled' so happily through a text about these new Web tools in the context of good literacy instruction."
-Gary Graves, Senior Research and Evaluation Advisor, Technology in Education
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory  

Discover how to harness Web tools to motivate and update student reading, research, and communication!

This book brings teachers a bold vision and on-the-ground Monday morning practicality. It will move educators to think differently about technology’s potential for strengthening students' critical thinking, writing, reflection, and interactive learning. Will Richardson demystifies words like "blog," "wiki," and "aggregator" making classroom technology an easily accessible component of classroom research, writing, and learning.

This guide demonstrates how Web tools can generate exciting new learning formats, and explains how to apply these tools in the classroom to engage all students in a new world of synchronous information feeds and interactive learning. With detailed, simple explanations, definitions and how-tos, critical information on Internet safety, and helpful links, this exciting book opens an immense toolbox, with specific teaching applications for

• Web logs, the most widely adopted tool of the read/write Web
• Wikis, a collaborative Webspace for sharing published content
• Rich Site Summary (RSS), feeding specific content into the classroom
• Aggregators, collecting content generated via the RSS feed
• Social bookmarking, archiving specific Web addresses
• Online photo galleries

This book makes it possible for anyone, no matter how inexperienced, to harness this amazing technology for the classroom today!

Moodle E-Learning Course Development

A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle, focused on course development and delivery and using the best educational practices. This unique book gives you more than just a guide to the Moodle software; it uses Moodle as a route to better teaching, more motivated students, and more successful courses. Moodle E-Learning Course Development shows you how to use Moodle as a tool to enhance your teaching. It will help you analyse your students' requirements, and come to an understanding of what Moodle can do for them. After that you'll see how to use every feature of Moodle to meet your course goals. The social constructionist learning philosophy is at the heart of Moodle: we all "construct" knowledge through interation with one another and with learning materials in a social way. Moodle E-Learning Course Develelopment will show you how to add static learning material, interactive activities, and social features to your courses so that students reach their learning potential. Whether you want to support traditional class teaching or lecturing, or provide complete online and distance learning courses, this book will prove a powerful resource throughout your use of Moodle.

Moodle Magic: Make It Happen

These are amazing times for the Internet and online learning. We are seeing a rapidly increasing commitment to internet-based learning from teachers, students, and institutions of all kinds. Online learning is being used to increase flexibility and communication within existing courses and to enable courses that could never exist before. Moodles have been implemented for users at all age levels. Online classroom are here NOW! Colleges and Universities offer Distance Learning NOW! There are even Virtual High Schools NOW! Moodle is designed to help educators create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. It is a learning management system that lets you provide documents, graded assignments, quizzes, discussion forums and more. In this book, you will learn some tips and tricks to using Moodle to expand your classroom's virtual learning environment.

ttfn (Internet Girls) (Internet Girls)

The bestselling sequel to ttyl

Told entirely in instant messages, this sequel to the hugely popular ttyl follows Maddie, Zoe, and Angela through the new flirtations, fixations, and frustrations of eleventh grade.

Angela has just found out that her family is moving to El Cerrito, California, and she seriously doesn’t know how she’ll survive without her best friends. Maddie makes some really bad moves with Clive, a pot-smoking hipster who wants to be “friends with benefits.” And Zoe finds herself falling for Doug, the sweet poet who has had a crush on Angela forever—a crush that Angela has come to count on.

The paperback is timed to release a month before the latest installment in the series, l8r, g8r. Together, the three books about the winsome threesome are a funny, touching chronicle of the rocky road of real friendship—bumpy, nutty, and marshmallow-sweet.

“Just as satisfying as the first book.” —Booklist

“Totally amazing.” —Girlslife.com

“Will ensure reader investment and generate discussion, both online and off.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing: Quick Reference for Affiliate Managers & Merchants

A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing was written to be an indispensable handbook for all affiliate managers and merchants, alike. In addition to providing concrete, practical answers to common (as well as not-so-common) questions, the book gives usable ideas on promoting affiliate programs, along with ways to keep affiliates motivated. This guide presents the author's information in a logical, convenient format.

The Praxis Series Official Guide

The only official guide to The Praxis Series of teacher-licensing exams-straight from the test-makers. If you're looking for the best, most trustworthy guide to the exams in. The Praxis Series, you've found it. This official Praxis guide comes straight from ETS--the people who actually make the tests. It will show you exactly what to expect -- whether you're taking the PPST to begin your teaching career, the PLT to demonstrate your professional expertise, or a Praxis II Subject Test to prove your knowledge of a specific K-12 teaching topic. Only ETS can give you real Praxis questions for practice, show you exactly what you'll see on screen on the computerized exams, and tell you the test-maker's own strategies for success. That's why this guide is your indispensable source for everything you need to know about. The Praxis Series. No other Praxis guide gives you: 6 full-length real PPST exams. Hundreds of authentic PLT and Praxis II questions-so you can study with the real thing. Sample PPST essays with actual raters' comments. The latest state-by-state teacher certification testing requirements. Comprehensive outline of PLT study topics. Complete coverage of Praxis II Elementary Education tests.

The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Proven Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning

"For those who think online learning can't be truly interactive, Patti Shank and her colleagues clearly demonstrate--in hundreds of examples--that it can. The real lesson in The Online Learning Idea Book is that technology doesn't build interactive learning; creative thinking and good, solid instructional design does. Using even a smidgen of the great ideas in this book will increase the learning effectiveness of any online program." --Marc J. Rosenberg, consultant, and author of Beyond E-Learning

"Patti Shank has collected great ideas about online learning and teaching from all over the globe. If you are an online instructor or instructional designer looking for new ways to involve and engage your learners, you'll be inspired by this book!"--Terry Morris, associate professor, William Rainey Harper Colleges

Filled with techniques, tools, tips, examples, resources, and dozens of "great ideas, this invaluable resource helps people who are looking to build online instructional materials -- or improve existing materials -- discover and implement what the best and brightest in industry and education are doing to make online learning more engaging and compelling. Increase your know-how in the following areas:

• Look and Feel: how to increase ease-of-use
• Graphics and Multimedia: how to make instructional graphics engaging and compelling
• Activities: how to make instruction itself engaging and compelling
• Tools: how to use a variety of online tools
• Instructional Design: how to design better and faster.

Blackboard For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Use the quick-start guide to create your course in a flash


Post course materials, give quizzes, facilitate discussions, and handle grades

You're an educator, not a psychic, so how would you know how to use Blackboard with no instructions? These step-by-step examples show you how to set up a Blackboard classroom, put your materials on the Internet, communicate online with students, and even evaluate their performance.

Discover how to
* Navigate the Blackboard environment
* Customize your course menu
* Add and organize course materials
* Give online assignments
* Conduct online discussions and chat rooms
* Keep track of grades

More and more schools, colleges, universities and business organizations and even government training agencies are taking their classes online. Blackboard is the leading platform for managing online classes, but surprisingly, there are no books telling instructors how to use it. Most places have a general hands-on introductory online course for new faculty that says, here is Blackboard, here is our course template, here are best practices in teaching online, here is what we expect from you, here are our policies and procedures, here's the link to library services, now go get a ready to start. And it usually takes place over 5-6 weeks, leaving faculty somewhat bewildered and overloaded with information. Blackboard provides an online manual with each classroom, and instructors have access to it, but it's not especially teacher-friendly. This book is intended to tell potential and current instructors,OK, you've been told to take your class online with Blackboard, now what? Here's what you need to know to get it online successfully. The book is organized to follow the order of concerns that an instructor would be likely to have, and then in the order in which the instructor would begin using the features. It is specific, detailed, with step-by-step examples to the common issues facing all teachers using Blackboard to set up a classroom. The book also discusses using Blackboard as an adjunct to a face-to-face classes. When learning theory or instructional design theory is presented, it is in the context of best practices with applications, rather than as theoretical discussion. Readers will be able to go from class notes to developing a ready-to-go online class, and then on to actually running the class successfully.