Re: improving textbooks -- some modest proposals

[Larry Woolf <Larry.Woolf@GAT.COM>]

At 1:59 PM -0700 2/17/2002, John Clement wrote:
>  The money and energy to do this is an important
> consideration.  I think that a federal granting process might be one way to
> go.  Of course another would be for the publishers to be required to cough
> up money for independent testing.  The money would go to a textbook
> superiorfund and then be handed out as a grant.
>
> I do not know the solution, and I suspect that there is no single solution.
> However, without good information I can not make an informed decision, nor
> can I hope to help others to make a good informed decision.

The difficulty of working with conventional textbooks is one reason why the
NSF Instructional Materials Division began. Materials developed by NSF,
although not perfect, undergo both limited pilot testing, then extensive
field testing, are required to have experts on the development team, and
the materials must undergo a final review by a university-type expert in
the field. The names of all the contributors are noted in the materials -
none are ghost writers or reviewers. I was the final technical reviewer for
a FOSS middle school module on electronics - I took a week off from work to
do the review, which involved reading every sentence carefully, making many
comments, suggestions, and corrections, and doing all the experiments.

Dr. Lawrence D. Woolf; General Atomics, 3550 General Atomics Court, Mail
Stop 15-242, San Diego, CA 92121