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
Yes, Val. Yes I have been frustrated with online textbooks! I think this project is really interesting, especially since the product could help thousands upon thousands of students around the world that may not have access to the tangible textbook. Look forward to reading more about it!
ReplyDeleteI can completely identify with the issue of sub-par online textbooks! One question though: are you going to be working more with how to make the user interface for such textbooks, or more on what material could be added to best utilize the online medium?
ReplyDeleteAs of right now, I am going to be working more on the material side of things. One addition we are considering for digital textbooks is adding videos to better explain and complement the text it is associated with.
DeleteThat sounds awesome! History class would be so much better if the textbooks had videos.
DeleteThis sounds like it could help a lot of students like us! I'm excited to see what solutions you can create by the end of the project.
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher, I am really interested in what you find as answers to your question. In my view, digital textbooks have not taken advantage of the medium. Instead, digital texts have tended to be standard texts which are simply transferred to the digital format. I am hoping your end product is helpful for teachers like me who have looked at digital texts but have been disappointed that they are simply the paper texts that have been placed in the digital format.
ReplyDeleteYes! That is very much what is occurring ring now! The ebooks are just digital versions of their paper counterparts. I hope my research and results can help teachers like you!
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