Abstract:

“For homework, do questions 1-45 odd on page 30.” These are disheartening words. So many questions, and yet, the answers are in the back for odd ones, so you have no excuse for not doing them. What good are solutions, though, if the textbook provides no intermediate help? How many drill problems should a student complete before he or she has mastered it?

It was easy for me to leave a couple drill problems at the end of the section. It doesn’t take imagination. If it did, maybe there wouldn’t be 100 questions at the end of every math text out there. Maybe there would be 20 meaningful questions.

This podcast isn’t about how many questions, but the quality of the questions. Some drill problems are necessary for a student to gain confidence, but texts also need to provide students with problems that are meaningful and directed. You can’t make every problem meaningful, but if its going to be a long problem, you can at least supply the student with some extra insight: Hints, Explinations, Reasons why the particular problem is unique or harder, Lists of approaches that will get the student started.

The main goal is to avoid having the student always come in to class asking the teacher to do the entire problem. The text should support the student enough for them to at least get started on most problems. The goal is not to eliminate the teacher, but to provide another source of knowledge when the teacher isn’t around.

External Links:

[1] My internet textbook

Abstract:

Get ready to count syllables again… Actually I already scoured my text for literacy issues. There is nothing more discouraging than reading your own text–except maybe listening to your own voice played back to you. But I digress. Organizationally, my text page looks pretty good. I’m proud of it. The words themselves, however, need a lot of extra work. I’m not talking about editing and fixing spelling.

The problem with applying the fry readability scale to a textbook is that textbooks have so many more variables than say, a book. According to the scale, my text is at a fifth grade level. This does not mean the material is easy to grasp, but only that a fifth grader could understand the language assuming he was already well educated on the principles of mathematical logic, and fifth graders are certainly not.

The presentation is good, but the content needs some revision.

External Links:

[1] My internet textbook

[2] Fry Readability Graph

Cheers.

But the podcast.

You can access it [here].

NOTE: I refer to several links during the podcast, which are located at the bottom of my blogroll, under Podcast #1. I am also listing them at the bottom of this page.

Also, link three seems to switch locations from time to time, so when the page comes up, you may have to click on an addition link and you will be redirected.

I’m having some issues with getting a feed going also.

Abstract:

The internet can be a powerful learning tool, but it also is a storehouse for millions of cluttered and dubious documents. How can educators tap in to this power while avoiding the pitfalls?

It is easy to put trust in a textbook, such as a name-brand text from a company like Prentice-Hall or Hartcourt Brace. These companies have a track record. They are established as publishers. Currently there are very few websites with this much credibility, possibly due to the fact that, quite literally, there is no paper-trail. Even websites such as Wikipedia, a dictionary written by millions of the world’s brightest, cannot be relied on as scholarly 100% of the time, despite the fact that the website has covered more articles and information in five years then any book-bound encyclopedia to date.

This podcast discusses the new possibilities that the internet brings to education, as well as the (currently) unsurmountable disadvantages to scholarly information on the internet.

External Links:

[1] My internet textbook

[2] Listing of Linux Open Source Releases

[3] Wikipedia, Current Accuracy Disputes

[4] Introduction to Editing Wikipedia

-”Unlike with other encyclopedias, the volunteer authors of Wikipedia articles don’t have to be experts or scholars, although some certainly are.”^[1]

-”While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, Wikipedia is more subject to subtle vandalism and viewpoint promotion than a typical reference work.”^[2]

-”Some problems are more serious, including vandalism (blatant stupidity, jokes that aren’t funny, placing pornography in articles, deliberate defacement or falsification), disputes which result in edit wars (where editors change an article back and forth and fight instead of discussing), and disruptive behavior. To deal with these cases, over a thousand Wikipedia administrators have the power to protect (lock) articles, and to block individual editors. These administrators are chosen through community discussion to enforce the site’s policies and guidelines.”^[1]

Discrepancies like this lead to markup by editors, such as these:

This may need a complete rewrite. Please discuss this issue on the talk page.

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.

They look somewhat different on Wikipedia due to the formatting of the blog.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Who_writes_Wikipedia

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

Also, I understand that the percentage of schools connected to the internet is not influenced by the socio-economic status of the school or its metropolitan status. However, there is obviously a correlation between percentage of households connected to the internet and socio-economic/metropolitan status (still looking for a good statistic here). This means that it may be feasible to implement internet texts in the classroom, but not outside of it.

Percent of public school instructional rooms with Internet access: 1994–2002

This graph represents a nationwide survey; The percentage of schools connected in New York State is likely to be almost 100%.

Here are some highlights:

“By the fall of 2000, almost all public schools in the United States had access to the Internet: 98 percent were connected. In comparison, 35 percent of public schools had access to the Internet in 1994 (table 1). Unlike in previous years, there were virtually no differences in school access to the Internet by school characteristics (e.g., poverty level¹ and metropolitan status) in 1999 or 2000.”

-80% of secondary schools in survey provided internet access to students “outside of regular school hours” (elementary schools only 46%).

-Schools with high minority enrollment were more likely to provide internet access to students outside of regular hours.

-Most schools that offered extended access to internet made it available before and after school, but hardly any schools made them available on the weekends (16% of the total 54% of schools that offered it, making the overall statistic about 8-9%).

http://regentsprep.org/: Very thorough, but not very strong organizationally. There are mini lessons for many math A and B topics. While the pages sometimes read like a textbook, they tend to be individual articles by different authors. For review purposes only.

http://www.nysedregents.org/: A collection of past regents exams, complete with scoring key and conversion charts

http://www.classzone.com/: Click on “click here for extra challenge” to see an example of “category 2″ type resource (See post “Example Internet Resources”).

1. Content that I can’t actually access unless I have that corresponding textbook

2. “Online study tools” that correspond to a textbook; I am able to access

3. Test-specific content such as regents review; not surprising considering that was part of my search criteria

4. Independent, stand alone material that doesn’t correspond to a state test; I am able to access

The number of resources that fell into category four were quite limited, and the ones I did find were usually college level material. Most of these were in the form of pdf.

My criteria for the search was all math related, so if you are based on another content area, try it for yourself and see if you don’t get similar results for another subject. I would guess that a search for science would turn up almost exactly the same thing. A subject like Global Studies, however, would probably be much different, with more editorializing. Usually the more ways there are to teach something, the easier it is to find someone who is willing to give a resource away for free (as evidenced by the numerous results for linear algebra I ran into).

www.geneseo.edu/~ajm20

All text, images, page design by Andrew J. Martin, except for the painting, “School of Athens,” which was originally done by Raphael.

Preliminary questions:

1) How would a high school student respond if their math textbook was in form of a website, assuming the student has access to the internet? What are the advantages of a textbook that is available online? Are there any such resources currently, and if so, are they professional enough to merit a switch from the standard published text?

2) What are the disadvantages of an online website? Who would author such a text, and how would teachers and faculty know what texts to trust? Is it fair to encourage students to use an online text if part of the student body does not have access to the internet? If only one student did not have access?

3) How hard is it to write a textbook that encourages students to read? Would an “internet textbook” encourage students to read more, or less? In general, what makes a good text book?