Discover the transformational work of student Olivia Van Ledtje, who exemplifies responsible online activism, inspiring both kids and adults in the global community. Kids are naturally curious about the world around them. They seek ways to understand and interact with their environment, often using digital tools to do so. Imagine a world where children’s curiosities are amplified -- helping them see the power of their thinking, perspective and voice. Spark Change examines the multitude of possibilities available when students are given the opportunity to amplify their learning online, centering on three ideas of citizenship: be a good person, be critical and be an advocate for something you care about in life. The book introduces readers to Liv, a young changemaker empowered to use digital tools to create and share content online. Liv’s story offers readers an opportunity to explore how students can use technology as a tool for empathy, equity and activism. Kids can’t become changemakers if they aren’t empowered to think beyond their own community. Liv’s online sense of agency serves as an example of maximizing opportunities, developing a powerful voice and making global connections that deepen her compassion for people and the world. This book: • Follows a model of gradual release of responsibility -- I do, we do, you do -- to show how to teach kids how to approach connected-learning experiences. • Draws on rich literacy and technology research on student identity and pairing literacy and thinking in a digital age. • Illustrates the value of creation and connected learning, weaving in the critical need for digital literacy for students. • Features young students as digital leaders, providing examples of digital activism and the power of authentic student voice and participation. Connected-learning opportunities help students develop key understandings about the world around them. This book shows how these understandings lead to social action, and how students develop a deeper sense of empathy and kindness from interacting with the world.

Awards for Spark Change: • Nautilus Awards 2020 in Silver: Gift & Specialty • American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Winner in Spirituality: Inspirational • 2020 IAN Book of the Year Award Finalist: Spiritual/Inspirational Attain greater self-awareness and orient toward your highest potential through a process of engaged, incisive questioning. It’s been said that finding the right question is as important as finding its answer. As author Jennie Lee writes, “Quality questions lead to quality answers. Questions promote deeper thought, connection, authenticity, and humility.” In Spark Change, Lee shows you how to identify your most important personal questions and explore how they might redefine the trajectory of your life. Here, Lee guides you through 108 inspiring prompts designed to deepen your awareness of your innermost needs and initiate powerful shifts throughout your life. Whether it’s examining the attitudes that hold you back or investigating where you truly want to go in life, these guided inquiries are meant to cultivate gratitude for your gifts, peace with the present moment, and resilience in the face of life’s challenges. For the last two decades, Lee has used conscious inquiry practices to encourage self-reflection in her yoga therapy practice. Inspired by the source teachings of classical yoga as well as Lee’s own inner journey, these prompts delve into some of the most enduring questions of psychology, self-improvement, and the spiritual path. With Lee’s piercing insight and constant guidance, Spark Change provides 108 prime opportunities to stop, ponder, and listen to the call of your most essential self.

“A plethora of insights about nature and ourselves, revealed by one man’s journey as he comes to terms with human exploitation of our planet.” —Dr. James Hansen, climate scientist and former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies Life on one-tenth the fossil fuels turns out to be awesome. We all want to be happy. Yet as we consume ever more in a frantic bid for happiness, global warming worsens. Alarmed by drastic changes now occurring in the Earth’s climate systems, Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist and suburban father of two, embarked on a journey to change his life and the world. He began by bicycling, growing food, meditating, and making other simple, fulfilling changes. Ultimately, he slashed his climate impact to under a tenth of the US average and became happier in the process. Being the Change explores the connections between our individual daily actions and our collective predicament. It merges science, spirituality, and practical action to develop a satisfying and appropriate response to global warming. Part one exposes our interconnected predicament: overpopulation, global warming, industrial agriculture, growth-addicted economics, a sold-out political system, and a mindset of separation from nature. It also includes a readable but authoritative overview of climate science. Part two offers a response at once obvious and unprecedented: mindfully opting out of this broken system and aligning our daily lives with the biosphere. The core message is deeply optimistic: living without fossil fuels is not only possible, it can be better. “In this timely and provocative book, Peter Kalmus points out that changing the world has to start with changing our own lives. It’s a crucial message that needs to be heard.” —John Michael Greer, author of After Progress and The Retro Future

This practical guide shows how to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations to navigate complexity and create change in our interconnected world. The social and environmental challenges we face today are not only complex, they are also systemic and structural and have no obvious solutions. They require diverse combinations of people, organizations, and sectors to coordinate actions and work together even when the way forward is unclear. Even so, collaborative efforts often fail because they attempt to navigate complexity with traditional strategic plans, created by hierarchies that ignore the way people naturally connect. By embracing a living-systems approach to organizing, impact networks bring people together to build relationships across boundaries; leverage the existing work, skills, and motivations of the group; and make progress amid unpredictable and ever-changing conditions. As a powerful and flexible organizing system that can span regions, organizations, and silos of all kinds, impact networks underlie some of the most impressive and large-scale efforts to create change across the globe. David Ehrlichman draws on his experience as a network builder; interviews with dozens of network leaders; and insights from the fields of network science, community building, and systems thinking to provide a clear process for creating and developing impact networks. Given the increasing complexity of our society and the issues we face, our ability to form, grow, and work through networks has never been more essential.

How to create the change you want to see in the world using the paradigm-busting ideas in this "utterly fascinating" (Adam Grant) big-idea book.​ Most of what we know about how ideas spread comes from bestselling authors who give us a compelling picture of a world, in which "influencers" are king, "sticky" ideas "go viral," and good behavior is "nudged" forward. The problem is that the world they describe is a world where information spreads, but beliefs and behaviors stay the same. When it comes to lasting change in what we think or the way we live, the dynamics are different: beliefs and behaviors are not transmitted from person to person in the simple way that a virus is. The real story of social change is more complex. When we are exposed to a new idea, our social networks guide our responses in striking and surprising ways. Drawing on deep-yet-accessible research and fascinating examples from the spread of coronavirus to the success of the Black Lives Matter movement, the failure of Google+, and the rise of political polarization, Change presents groundbreaking and paradigm-shifting new science for understanding what drives change, and how we can change the world around us.

Production-targeted Spark guidance with real-world use cases Spark: Big Data Cluster Computing in Production goes beyond general Spark overviews to provide targeted guidance toward using lightning-fast big-data clustering in production. Written by an expert team well-known in the big data community, this book walks you through the challenges in moving from proof-of-concept or demo Spark applications to live Spark in production. Real use cases provide deep insight into common problems, limitations, challenges, and opportunities, while expert tips and tricks help you get the most out of Spark performance. Coverage includes Spark SQL, Tachyon, Kerberos, ML Lib, YARN, and Mesos, with clear, actionable guidance on resource scheduling, db connectors, streaming, security, and much more. Spark has become the tool of choice for many Big Data problems, with more active contributors than any other Apache Software project. General introductory books abound, but this book is the first to provide deep insight and real-world advice on using Spark in production. Specific guidance, expert tips, and invaluable foresight make this guide an incredibly useful resource for real production settings. Review Spark hardware requirements and estimate cluster size Gain insight from real-world production use cases Tighten security, schedule resources, and fine-tune performance Overcome common problems encountered using Spark in production Spark works with other big data tools including MapReduce and Hadoop, and uses languages you already know like Java, Scala, Python, and R. Lightning speed makes Spark too good to pass up, but understanding limitations and challenges in advance goes a long way toward easing actual production implementation. Spark: Big Data Cluster Computing in Production tells you everything you need to know, with real-world production insight and expert guidance, tips, and tricks.

Naturally quiet since birth, Mina and her stormbeast, Pixit, lead others like themselves in defying authority and attempting to spread the truth that Alorria's idyllic weather comes at a steep cost.

Learn how to use, deploy, and maintain Apache Spark with this comprehensive guide, written by the creators of the open-source cluster-computing framework. With an emphasis on improvements and new features in Spark 2.0, authors Bill Chambers and Matei Zaharia break down Spark topics into distinct sections, each with unique goals. Youâ??ll explore the basic operations and common functions of Sparkâ??s structured APIs, as well as Structured Streaming, a new high-level API for building end-to-end streaming applications. Developers and system administrators will learn the fundamentals of monitoring, tuning, and debugging Spark, and explore machine learning techniques and scenarios for employing MLlib, Sparkâ??s scalable machine-learning library. Get a gentle overview of big data and Spark Learn about DataFrames, SQL, and Datasetsâ??Sparkâ??s core APIsâ??through worked examples Dive into Sparkâ??s low-level APIs, RDDs, and execution of SQL and DataFrames Understand how Spark runs on a cluster Debug, monitor, and tune Spark clusters and applications Learn the power of Structured Streaming, Sparkâ??s stream-processing engine Learn how you can apply MLlib to a variety of problems, including classification or recommendation

Strategies for advocacy, fundraising, and engaging the community Social Change Anytime Everywhere was written for nonprofit staff who say themselves or are asked by others, “Email communications, social media, and mobile are important, but how will they help our nonprofit and the issues we work on? Most importantly, how the heck do we integrate and utilize these tools successfully?” The book will help answer these questions, and is organized to guide readers through the planning and implementation of online multi-channel strategies that will spark advocacy, raise money and promote deeper community engagement in order to achieve social change in real time. It also serves as a resource to help nonprofit staff and their boards quickly understand the evolving online landscape and identify and implement the best online channels, strategies, tools, and tactics to help their organizations achieve their missions.