Digital Textbooks

New Digital Math Textbook Incorporates Inquiry-Based Learning

• By Michael Hart
• 01/08/15

A new digital math curriculum for middle and high school students is designed to encourage inquiry-based learning and is aligned with Common Core State Standards.

Discovery Education has introduced its Math Techbook, a digital textbook that will support math education for middle school students as well as high school Algebra I and II and Geometry. The comprehensive digital course material includes Common Core-aligned content along with interactive learning concepts, videos, digital tools and game-like activities, all intended to follow the discover-practice-apply cycle instructional approach.

Tools available to students include a graphing calculator, geometry tool, whiteboard tool and a matrix solver. There is also a student dashboard that gives students themselves the opportunity to monitor their own progress in real time.

"This digital textbook immediately engages students in instruction and provides all the content and tools I need to create a modern digital learning environment that fosters deeper, lasting understanding of math concepts," said Jeffery Baugus, math department chair and dean of students at Woodlawn Beach Middle School in Gulf Breeze, FL.

For teachers, there is also a real-time dashboard along with notes, tips for classroom discussion and instructions about how to demonstrate mathematical practices.

The Math Techbook features formative assessment tools throughout the course designed lo help prepare students for high-stakes assessments.

Also for teachers there is an embedded, customized professional development program that not only helps them use the Math Techbook with their students, but also gives them strategies to engage students generally in inquiry-based instruction, math investigations and collaborative, real-world problem solving that can be used on any device and in any classroom configuration.

The Math Techbook is the latest addition to a series of similar digital textbooks that Discovery Education has created in recent years, all in alignment with Common Core Standards.