3 Books
At SET, we love to read and dig into many non-fiction books per year. If you’re looking to add books to your summer reading list, here are the three that we recommend:
A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger
We highly recommend that EVERYONE read this book. Warren Berger provides an in-depth overview of how to craft questions to learn, grow, and communicate effectively. Peppered throughout the book are inspiring examples of individuals and companies who have tapped into the art of asking BEAUTIFUL questions.
The Innovator's Dilemma by Clay Christensen
Learn about some of the world’s greatest innovators and their transformational thinking. Use the strategies and examples in this book to help you, your students, and your colleagues become better innovators!
Sprint by Jake Knapp
This very practical book outlines what it takes to solve any problem in 5 days. Readers can apply the strategies outlined in any work or personal setting, and, we believe, modify them to fit a variety of schedules. We highly recommend that teachers read this book to generate ideas for how they can encourage greater problem solving among students in their classrooms.
3 Tools
We had a really hard time picking just 3 tools to showcase, but these are the 3 that we use most often and truly make our work more efficient.
Snappa
Snappa is one of SET’s favourite design tools! This site allows you to make beautiful and customizable graphics for just about anything. You don’t need to be an artist to use it, and you’ll end up with professional looking graphics.
Slack
Slack is, by far, SET’S favourite work and communication tool. Slack is like email, text, and gchat all rolled into one, and it works on any device! Our teams have nearly eliminated using email (what?!), and we can no longer imagine work without it. Run a pilot with your team(s) this summer!
P.S. We know someone who uses it with their family and has created channels for every part of their lives (including grocery lists)!
Screencast-O-Matic
SET uses Screencast-O-Matic for both video recordings of the screen (to demo software) and the video camera feature. This great tool is easy to use and helps you record public videos directly to youtube from Screencast-O-Matic. Try it the next time you want to send a tutorial or make a video of yourself!
3 Podcasts
Why not try listening to a podcast when you’re at the gym or on a roadtrip? There are tons of podcasts to choose from, but these are our favorites (we’re a little biased)!
Lunch Duty Podcast
SET is a proud sponsor of the Lunch Duty podcast, and our SET CEO is the podcast’s Creative Director. This podcast is about education and is ‘for teachers by teachers.’ We’ll be releasing a summer episode, and, before you know it, we’ll be releasing our “back to school” episode!
How I Built This
Aside from the Lunch Duty podcast, this podcast is our favorite! It’s all about entrepreneurs and how they started their companies. We’ve laughed, cried (a little), and, most importantly, been inspired by every episode.
Sidedoor
Sidedoor is a Smithsonian Institute’s podcast that shares ideas from many speakers about interesting studies, ideas, and happenings from all over the globe. This podcast will get your brain going and makes for great dinner table conversations!