Textbooks and Technology

This past week I attended a textbook adoption fair in order to examine the new books for the State of Indiana adoption cycle. I asked many of the publishers about what technologies were used by the students. The answer was that the books were online and on CD so they could access them from anywhere. I was also told that all of the supplementary materials were online for the instructor. One company even has their teacher notes as podcasts so you can listen to "how to teach the lesson" from your mp3 player. The interesting thing was that all of these folks were talking about productivity technology, like using power point notes, lessons on video, smartboards, mobie's (tablets with clickers), test banks, online planning guides, and other supplemental type stuff. No one was talking about how students investigate the mathematics. Publishers are giving away lots of perks, like free TI-emulators, smartboards, overhead projectors, hotmath.com subscriptions, applets they have developed in-house, online graphing calculators (in house), and much more. This is not the case for the non-for-profits though. They can not afford to give these things away so it is really an unfair system (and is illegal). Indiana is one of only a handful of states that even allow this type of marketing. So, needless to say, I had to really think about how I asked my technology question because I was looking for answers like spreadsheets and Geometer's Sketchpad. One guy had never heard of this and I had to say that GSP has been around for 20 years. It was an educational event and I am glad that I took the day to investigate.

What did I find out? Graphing calculators are really the only cognitive technology that is mentioned by the sales reps. TI-83 and TI-84 was really it. To find activities for GSP or TI-NSPiRE, you really have to start with those companies and search it backwards to the text book. Then you will find the activities.