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Unfortunately many schools mandate the books. The director of instruction
in the school I was at not only insisted that I have a book, but made me
change the book from the one I wanted to something else. Actually that is
when I ended up leaving. Minds on Physics is a book you can lean on
because
it has activities and resembles a workbook, but it has condensed readings
in
the back which do not take much time. Basically the students were
assigned
a short reading each class period which was tightly coordinated with the
activities which were done in class.
But students complained it was not a "real" book. Never mind that they
won't crack open real books except to do the simplistic back of chapter
homework. MOP by contrast was heavily used in class. I refuse to assign
back of chapter work as it is all available on the web and sometimes for
free. MOP activities were often finished at home, but a lot of them were
done in class, along with the various labs.
The DI at my school even insisted on a computer science book when I
suggested a very good free online one. After all that would be ideal for
CS. Then she asked for my recommendation of a CS book when I had full
time
physics and no more CS classes. But I could not recommend any of them, so
she picked the hardest one that was unreadable by the students. Then she
was intending to teach psychology, but tried to read the book, and
couldn't
understand it, so she hired someone else to teach it from the same book.
How could she expect the students to use the book if she couldn't.
The community college that I teach at part time has a mandated book and I
have no input!!! I am not "allowed" to recommend places where they can
get
it much more cheaply than the campus store. I always coordinate readings
with what we do in class, but never take problems from it. Instead I put
HW
on the private course web site.
John M. Clement
Houston, TX
Very interesting. I don't use books any more in my (high
school) classes.
They are not written for students to understand and are way
too encyclopedic (and expensive).
And students have no time to read them with all the other
(home)work they have to do.
I use my own notes to teach the ten topics I get to each year.
Nothing beats an engaging physics teacher in class to make
physics come alive.
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