Films: Foreign Films, Documentaries, and Romance

Flores de Otro Mundo (DVD): la participacion de Television Espanola Produccions La Iguana y Alta Films presentan guion, Iciar Boll

En el pequeño pueblo de Santa Eulalia los solteros organizan una fiesta a la que acude un autocar de mujeres casaderas. Damián, Alfonso y Carmelo buscarán establecer relación con Patricia, una muchacha dominicana, Marirrosi, una enfermera de Bilbao y Milady, una joven cubana.

Patricia, a woman from Dominican Republic, needs a home and an economic security that her illegal status in Madrid does not provide her. Milady, twenty, born in Havana and dying to travel the world. Marirosi has a job, a home, and the most complete solitude... just like Alfonso, Damián and Carmelo, men from the St. Eulalia, a village lacking both marrying women and future. A bachelors' party forces the encounter between them and the beginning of this bittersweet story of sharing a living.

Food, Inc. (DVD): Michal Pollan, Eric Schlosser

Documentary - The current method of raw food production is largely a response to the growth of the fast food industry since the 1950s. The production of food overall has more drastically changed since that time than the several thousand years prior. Controlled primarily by a handful of multinational corporations, the global food production business - with an emphasis on the business - has as its unwritten goals production of large quantities of food at low direct inputs (most often subsidized) resulting in enormous profits, which in turn results in greater control of the global supply of food sources within these few companies. Health and safety (of the food itself, of the animals produced themselves, of the workers on the assembly lines, and of the consumers actually eating the food) are often overlooked by the companies, and are often overlooked by government in an effort to provide cheap food regardless of these negative consequences. Many of the changes are based on advancements in science and technology, but often have negative side effects. The answer that the companies have come up with is to throw more science at the problems to bandage the issues but not the root causes. The global food supply may be in crisis with lack of biodiversity, but can be changed on the demand side of the equation.

Ladron que Roba a Ladron (To Rob a Thief) (DVD):

Two former thieves reunite to rob the biggest thief they know: Moctesuma Valdez, a TV infomercial guru who's made millions selling worthless health products to poor Latino immigrants. When none of their affiliates want to go undercover as day laborers to pull off the heist, the two men turn to the real thing for help.

Love in the Time of Cholera (DVD): Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Benjamin Bratt, Catalina Sandino Moreno

At the end of the 19th century in Cartagena, a river port in Colombia, Florentino Ariza falls in love at first sight of Fermina Daza. They secretly correspond and she eventually agrees to marry but her father discovers their relationship and sends her to distant relatives. When she returns some years later, Fermina agrees to marry Dr. Juvenal Urbino, her father's choice. Their fifty year marriage is marked by roughly equal amounts of love and anger. Fermina's marriage devastates Florentino, but his mother throws a willing widow into his bed and he discovers that sex is a very good pain reliever. He begins to number and describe each of his women, beginning with #1, the widow, and eventually has over 600 names and notes. He also decides to be as successful and rich as Dr. Urbino and, when the doctor dies suddenly, immediately renews his courtship of Fermina.

Ma Vie en Rose (DVD): Georges Du Fresne, Michele Laroque, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Julien Rivière

Ludovic is a young boy who can't wait to grow up to be a woman. When his family discovers the little girl blossoming in him they are forced to contend with their own discomfort and the lack of understanding from their new neighbors. Their anger and impatience cave and Ludovic is sent to see a psychiatrist in the hopes of fixing whatever is wrong with him. A movie that addresses trans-gender and gender issues in general through the eyes of a child.

Solas (Alone) (DVD): Paco de Osca, Antonio Dechant, Ana Fernández, Angel Fernandez

Like Satyajit Ray's APARAJITO or Yasujiro Ozu's TOKYO STORY, director Benito Zambrono's SOLAS is a quiet, realistic film that examines relationships between parents and children, the decline of...Director Benito Zambrono's SOLAS is a quiet, realistic film that examines relationships between parents and children, the decline of traditional values, and urban anomie. While waiting for her husband to recover in a hospital, a mother (Maria Galiana) stays with her estranged daughter, Maria (Ana Fernandez), who fled her parents rural home in Andalusia because she could no longer bear her father's abusiveness and her mother's passivity. As the daughter struggles to find dignity in her job and her relationships with men, her mother quietly tries to brighten the life of her daughter and an elderly neighbor with only a dog for a companion. Gradually, Maria realizes that behind her mother's passivity is a strength and compassion that is rare in modern Spain. SOLAS, which means alone, is a low-budget film using little-known actors; it's strong and moving, however, with emotionally wrenching performances from the entire cast. Setting a high standard with his feature-film debut, Zambrano suggests that the solution to loneliness and poverty lies in remembering how to care for others.

Speaking in Tongues (DVD): Directors - Marcia Jarmel & Ken Schneider

Documentary - Four students become fluent in second languages while attending public school, with challenging and delightful results.

Education: Teach Well, Live Well & Effective Reading Teachers

Teach Well, Live Well: Strategies for Success (BOOK): by John Luckner & Suzanne Rudolph

"The information here-knowledge that veteran teachers have acquired through experience-will be a real life-saver for new teachers."—Cynthia A. Givens, Director, The Education Station

"This book is great for a working teacher because it gives just enough background to validate the concepts without overwhelming the practical application."—Sharon Jefferies, Teacher

"This book has suggestions for organization that are invaluable to new or veteran teachers."—Jude A. Huntz, Adult Education Coordinator

"This is an amazing book. I would not hesitate to give this to someone who was starting on a teaching career."—Jane Hunn, Science Teacher

Policy and Performance in American Higher Education: An Examination of Cases Across State Systems (BOOK): by Richard Richardson Jr. and Mario Martinez

Policy and Performance in American Higher Education presents a new approach to understanding how public policy influences institutional performance, with practical insight for those charged with crafting and implementing higher education policy.

Public institutions of higher learning are called upon by state governments to provide educational access and opportunity for students. Paradoxically, the education policies enacted by state legislatures are often complex and costly to implement, which can ultimately detract from that mission. Richard Richardson, Jr., and Mario Martinez evaluate the higher education systems of five states to explain how these policies are developed and how they affect the performance of individual institutions.

Preparing Effective Teachers of Reading: Putting Research Findings to Work for Student Learning (BOOK): Editor Boyce C. Williams

Preparing Effective Teachers of Reading will show educators and administrators (K–12 and higher education) how a higher education initiative used collaboration and partnerships to respond to one of the greatest needs facing the nation—improving the reading achievement of poor and minority children. The book will also provide readers with a forum for understanding scientifically- based reading research (SBRR) and instruction, and the five essential components of reading. In addition, the book will showcase, through evaluation findings and a case study, how diverse geographic, ethnic, and racial institutions are creating national models for bridging the achievement gap in reading, teaching reading, preparing new teachers, and engaging key stakeholders by transforming curricula and syllabi, establishing reading centers, and providing directed teaching and tutoring experiences for candidates.

Promoting Integrated and Transformative Assessment: A Deeper Focus on Student Learning (BOOK): Catherine M. Wehlburg

Assessment plays a key role in institutions of higher education. However, many colleges and universities simply add their assessment plans onto other teaching, learning, service, and research activities in order to prepare for an impending accreditation visit. In this important resource, Catherine M. Wehlburg outlines an integrated and ongoing system for assessment that both prepares for an accreditation visit and truly enhances student learning. This innovative approach can be adapted for use in a wide variety of situations to transform a department or an entire institution.

Recent Innovations in Educational Technology that Facilitate Student Learning (BOOK): edited by Daniel H. Robinson & Gregory Schraw

A volume in Current Perspectives on Cognition, Learning, and Instruction Series Editors Daniel H. Robinson, University of Texas and Gregory Schraw, University of Nevada at Las Vegas Founding Editor James M. Royer, University of Massachusetts The field of educational technology is exploding in terms of innovations being developed daily. Most of these innovations hold fascinating promise but enjoy almost no empirical support. There are educational researchers who have both developed innovations and tested their potential empirically. This book will capture the latest and most promising innovations from the leading educational technologists in the world, including animations, simulations, visualizations, navigation, manipulatives, pedagogical agents, and assessment. This book is appropriate for university courses in educational technology for those wishing to showcase the latest innovations that are accompanied by empirical support.

Education: Higher Education Transformed, Positive Strategies in Behavioral Intervention, & Charter Schools - Hope or Hype

American Higher Education Transformed, 1940-2005: Documenting the National Discourse (BOOK): edited by Wilson Smith and Thomas Bender

This long-awaited sequel to Richard Hofstadter and Wilson Smith's classic anthology American Higher Education: A Documentary History presents one hundred and seventy-two key edited documents that record the transformation of higher education over the past sixty years.

The volume includes such seminal documents as Vannevar Bush's 1945 report to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Science, the Endless Frontier; the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education and Sweezy v. New Hampshire; and Adrienne Rich's challenging essay "Taking Women Students Seriously." The wide variety of readings underscores responses of higher education to a memorable, often tumultuous, half century. Colleges and universities faced a transformation of their educational goals, institutional structures and curricula, and admission policies; the ethnic and economic composition of student bodies; an expanding social and gender membership in the professoriate; their growing allegiance to and dependence on federal and foundation financial aids; and even the definitions and defenses of academic freedom.

Behavioral Interventions in Schools: Evidence-Based Positive Strategies (BOOK): edited by Angeleque Akin-Little

This book provides school psychologists, counselors, social workers, school administrators, and teachers with a summary of ecologically sound primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies. The contributors cover fundamentals such as how to conduct a behavioral assessment, how to measure treatment integrity and response to intervention, and how to promote generalization and maintenance of learned positive behaviors. They also discuss prevention measures such as positive behavior support and group contingencies that schools can implement system-wide. Several chapters describe more narrowly focused interventions such as daily report cards and self modeling, while the final section explains how to customize behavioral strategies for special populations such as preschoolers; children with autism, internalizing, or externalizing disorders; and those who have experienced trauma.

Charter Schools: Hope or Hype? (BOOK): by Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider

Schools, prisons, hospitals, governments, and the like should not be run as businesses or following business principles. The reason is simple, most businesses fail. Business methodology more often than not leads to failure. Society should, instead prefer and follow the methods of science, engineering, and democracy.

Charter Schools in Eight States: Effects on Achievement, Attainment, Integration, and Competition (BOOK): by Ron Zimmer

Charter schools now exist in 40 states, but the best charter-school studies to date have focused on individual states. This book examines charter schools in eight states with varied policy contexts. It assesses the characteristics of charter schools' students, their effectiveness in raising student achievement and promoting graduation and college entry, and their competitive effects on student achievement in traditional public schools.

Closed minds?: Politics and Ideology in American Universities (BOOK): by Bruce L.R. Smith, Jeremy D. Mayer, A. Lee Fritschler

Contrary to popular belief, the problem with U.S. higher education is not too much politics but too little. Far from being bastions of liberal bias, American universities have largely withdrawn from the world of politics. So conclude Bruce L. R. Smith, Jeremy Mayer, and Lee Fritschler in this illuminating book.

Congress and the Classroom: From the Cold War to "No Child Left Behind" (BOOK): by Lee W. Anderson

Covering in depth 50 years of American education history, Anderson's scholarly work considers Congress's role in federal government education policies, drawing principally from congressional records but rendering them in surprisingly accessible prose. Following congress from its initial reluctance to involve itself in state educational affairs to its current bipartisan belief in federal education investment, Anderson traces the debate from the Ordinance of 1785 to the landmark National Defense Act of 1958 to the "large-scale compromise" of the No Child Left Behind act, which balances "federal support and high-stakes accountability."

Anderson has an eye for the telling quote, such as then-President Ford's prescient remark that the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 "will remain in effect even though the Congress appropriates far less than the amounts contemplated," cutting to the quick of a persistent problem in all American educational legislation: woeful underfunding. By keeping his analysis to a relatively small segment of the debate that touches so many, and by focusing on the last five decades of enacted legislation, Anderson has crafted a worthwhile and clarifying look at the changing face of federal educational funding.

Negotiating Literacy Learning: Exploring the Challenges and Achievements of Struggling Readers (BOOK): Edited by Janine K. Bixler

Teaching professionals encounter students at varying levels of literacy proficiency and achievement. Negotiating Literacy Learning brilliantly illustrates eight real-life examples of children who struggle with reading, outlining the steps eight master teachers take to diagnose and remediate those problems. The cases shared in this text identify reading difficulties that teachers typically encounter in their classrooms, walking readers through each teacher's method for negotiating learning. Cases are organized in a clear and succinct manner, beginning with assessments followed by an instructional decision-making process to demonstrate a methodology you can follow to ensure that your students reach their literacy potential. This book is for all professionals who believe that teaching requires a commitment to learning from and listening to students in order to improve teaching responses.

Archeology: Archeological Oceanography by Ballard

Archaeological Oceanography (BOOK): by Robert D. Ballard, editor

The sea floor contains thousands of shipwreck sites, many of them dating to the earliest eras of seafaring, and archeological oceanography is an emerging field, spurred by new and developing technology, that's plumbing the depths (technically 300 feet and below, where scuba divers fear to fin) to explore them. Detailing research excursions from the Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Conn., and the Institute for Archaeology Oceanography at the Univ. of Rhode Island, shipwreck sites include the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, as well as the Titanic and the Bismarck.

In 18 chapters, written by different specialists, the book covers five areas. Part one is a lucid tutorial in technology and techniques, including excavation technology and site conservation procedures. Parts two and three discuss the examination of modern and ancient shipwrecks. Part four describes the study of submerged landscapes occupied by humans at the end of the last ice age, and part five is devoted to Ballard's particular goal of developing remotely operated seafloor observatories, allowing real-time site observation by researchers and students. Theoretical material is shown in clear diagrams, and crisp photographs show underwater "in situ" placements of artifacts. Although highly suitable for a college-level class, this volume makes an informative resource for anyone interested in cutting edge archaeology.