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Re: [Phys-l] Textbook review repository?



On 03/17/2009 08:16 AM, Jeff Loats wrote:

In the age of Internet 2.0 I was wondering if anyone knows of places where
reviews of physics textbooks (done by physics teachers) are collected?


http://www.textbookleague.org/

which says in part:

] The Web site of The Textbook League is a resource for middle-school
] and high-school educators. It provides commentaries on some 200
] items, including textbooks, curriculum manuals, videos and reference
] books.

From what I've seen, the quality of their typical review is reasonably
high.

===============

There is also the Packard Foundation report by John Hubisz
http://www.science-house.org/middleschool/reviews/textreview.html

That's mostly out-of-date but still serves as a commendable benchmark
for careful, detailed reviews.

It is a huge amount of work to write such reviews, and having a
foundation _pay_ for the reviews makes tremendous amounts of sense.

The principle is:
One careful, detailed review is worth more than
a thousand half-baked reviews.

=============================

I would like to see a review process that was
*) _ongoing_ to keep up with new releases,
*) _systematic_, and
*) _comparative_, leading to a _table_ that compares the various
contenders according to a few fundamental criteria.

but I don't know of any such thing.