Hello to people of the blogging world!
I am Valarie Varanese and this is my first experience blogging, so forgive me if it's a bit rough in the beginning. Here's a little bit about myself: I am a current senior at BASIS Scottsdale in Scottsdale, Arizona; my favorite hobbies include playing soccer, running track, and learning about pretty much anything.
As a senior, BASIS allows me to take of the third trimester of the school year to pursue a research project in any area of my interest. This is formally called the Senior Research Project or SRP for short. For my SRP I decided to work with my off-site mentor Dr. Anne Duffy, my high school chemistry teacher, and work with my on-site mentors Ruth Wylie and Joey Eschrich who are the assistant director and program manager/ editor, respectively, at Arizona State University's center for science and the imagination, located at ASU's Downtown Phoenix Campus. I will link my project proposal to this blog, so if you wish you can read in detail what it is I hope to accomplish.
Have you ever been frustrated with the layout of an online textbook? Or upset because you don't feel the online version is as good as the real version? Have you ever felt like you weren't learning the material well enough just through the online version? I will be researching how to fix these problems and many more over the course of 10 weeks. Now that digital textbooks are an option, a much cheaper option at that, for students it is time to design them for maximum amount of learning.
I hope you will come on the journey with me!
-Val
