Posted on 08/01/2010 2:48:35 PM PDT by proxy_user
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Might I suggest a gander at The Teaching Company?
Most state colleges that get fixed tuition from their legislatures make lots on textbook sales. The school will mark up books as much as 200% to make up for revenue they can’t get from tuition fees. Electronic textbooks are far off as the teacher unions and of course printing unions are all against it.
I will still ALWAYS prefer actual, physical books. Although I remember when I was in college about 18 years ago, my textbooks were outrageous - unless I was lucky enough to find a used one, and those were still pretty steep in price.
Reading on the computer and such can be hard on one’s eyes. Not to mention the distraction that would be present on the computer itself..
And sometimes, computers crash. Mines did right before my final in sociology.
Check out Robison Curriculum.
Yes. Or they co-author or consult on the writing of a new math text.
It is quite the racket.
As I like to rant upon more than one occasion, there has been nothing new discovered in mathematics below the MS level in the last 100 years. Any math text from the last 100 years that has been successfully used in grade or high school teaching will suffice for the next 100+ years.
I’ve long been infuriated with the “methods” crowd that keeps wanting to change texts to comport with the latest educational “methods” fads that sweep through the schools. A lot of grade school math is taught with repetition and drills - what the methods people like to call “drill and kill.”
Well, as I tell them, if I had to even think about basic computational math as an engineer, I’d be dead meat. So yes, I believe in drill and kill. Kids should be able to rattle off the multiplication table up to 15x15 without blinking an eye, IMO. They should be able to whip out long division easily. We could alter how much geometry proofs are needed, but every kid should have a couple years of algebra as well as a full course in basic math, including business math, before they graduate from high school. None of this math has changed in the last 100 years. We should find a text, agree on it and just use it in all schools at that grade level, and keep using it year after year.
A good rant, indeed!
>>We should find a text, agree on it and just use it in all schools at that grade level, and keep using it year after year.
We should do no such thing.
We should kill every primary K-12 education establishment about the county level (state and Federal DOEds), and even the county level programs in large counties. Institute a voucher system, and then let the local school districts decide what textbooks to use. And then sink or swim based on those choices.
As constructive criticism, however:
1) The website has a remarkably amateur look and feel coming from the founder of Sun Microsystems.
2) Has he never hear of e-Books? What is the material only available in MS Word and Powerpoint formats rather than also being available in ePub or even PDF formats? I know he wants to make the content easily modified by teachers, but many will just use it as is.
Found an interesting program today for my youngest all on line
http://homeschool.kineticbooks.com/index.php
Tiredoftaxes, perhaps you could repost the Homeschoolers Forum thread again.
It’s the time of year for it and some people have alerted me that they’ve found some sources for free curriculum.
It might be very useful for people just starting off again, or looking for something new.
Sorry, I fell way behind. We had no working computer this summer until now. Marking your message for follow-up asap.
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