Wednesday, April 25, 2012

What would YOU like to see in a Digital Math Textbook?

Our department is looking into writing our own digital textbook.   Whenever we adopt a new textbook it seems like we rewrite it anyway.  Why not write it ourselves.  So we discussed the question:  "What would you like to see in a digital textbook?"   Please add to the list by giving a comment.


1.  Levels of examples

2.   Video examples

3.   Video lessons

4.   Assessment tool

5.  Homework problems easily printable

6.  Link for students to access SMARTBoard notes

7.  Geogebra/sketchpad/fathom activities

8.  Wikipedia like edits

9.  Accessibility (all browsers, phones, etc)

10.  Interactive Practice

11.  Homework submission

12.  Dynamic charts

13.  Exploratory features

14.  Tutorials

15.  Plenty of practice problems

16.  Online quizzes with built in mastery and explanation of correct answer

17.  Test generator-choose questions by standards. Alternate questions

18.  Students can highlight sections, annotate on-line, and drag and drop main ideas to make a study guide.

19.  Targets generator with tutorial

20.  Reference to Google tutorial topics

21.  Aleks like account

22.  Shows only the problems that the teacher wants to give.

23.  Dynamic and up to date

24.  Immediate feedback on practice

25.  Printable Homework

26.  Grades and inputs the scores into grade book

27.  Interactive links

28.  Dynamic Charts (up to date)

29.  Easy to view on a Smartphone

30.  Links to other help websites like Khan Academy

31.  Lessons if they don’t understand a concept

32.  Some type of self-assessment where they can see what their mistakes are

33.  More practice problems at different levels of difficulty

34.  Some sort of explanation or hint for practice problems that a student doesn’t know how to do


Please give some ideas that you have?


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Accuracy and not a lot of distracting pictures.

ksl said...

I recall a Dan Meyer presentation in which he listed some guidelines for digital curriculum. One that stood out to me was "crowdsourcing." Students' responses to various math tasks are instantaneously gathered and displayed to all, leading to consensus-building and opening up points for discussion. Another neat idea was how he presented an initial round of prompts for estimating (e.g., "What do you think is the measure of this ____?"). After which students applied the target skill for the lesson. Finally, I also appreciated his use of video prompts in which the "answer" to a question was evident at the conclusion of the video, instead of being simply an answer written in the back of the textbook. How broadly this technique can be used I don't know, but it seemed like worthwhile advice.

Cameron Byerley said...

I would want the curriculum to promote quantitative literacy. I don't just want students to understand how to compute a proportion, but also how to imagine a proportional situation. I don't just want them to know how to divide, but to be able to imagine what the quotient represents in a variety of contexts.

Phil said...

I would have to add to the crowdsourcing/wikipedia idea: have easy edits by the students, but show each student's edits clearly, distinguished from other edits. Then, as people found those edits helpful, they could click something to recommend it, and eventually those methods would be seen at the top of the edit list.