One of my thoughts as I watch my middle school students carrying their overloaded backpacks each day is “Won’t it be nice when their textbooks are digital and all they have to carry is their laptop?” Well, my friends, it looks like that thought may become a reality… finally! I just finished working through some portions of Discovery Educations Science Techbook and was so excited about it that I showed and shared with one of our Science classes. When I got to the class, I asked them what they were working on and was told that they were finishing up Energy. I went directly to the Energy “chapter” and brought up videos and activities, even assessments, that they were able to work through with me. The Techbook is not just a digital textbook, it is completely interactive through videos, explorations, and the AMAZING interactive glossary. We had a great time going through the content and many fealt like they understood the concepts more after going through just a sample of what it had to offer. I heard several people comment that they wish they had had this earlier in the year and how awesome it was. Unfortunately, the Techbook is not yet available in Virginia (we had to look at North Carolina’s Techbook), but we are crossing our fingers that it will be available soon. After seeing what the Techbook had to offer, it really made me wish that I could go back to school myself and relearn these same concepts.
With the ever increasing amount of technology going into our schools, this seems like a no brainer. We LOVED it! Thanks for letting us try it out Discovery!
