Online textbooks becoming more popular.

First, we saw textbooks on CD. Then publishers began offering online subscription services that featured updates and corrected mistakes as well as provided links to resources and virtual field trips. Today, however, districts are choosing to receive the entire textbook online. "Teacher resources used to come in a box," says Janey Kaufmann, K-12 science coordinator for the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Unified School District. "Recently I saw a resource kit on a flash drive that a teacher could wear around her neck." Kaufmann says online textbooks simplify test creation; teachers can make multiple versions or modify questions just by clicking.

Barbara Reinert, a seventh-grade science teacher at Copper Ridge Middle School in Scottsdale, Ariz., has used online textbooks for a year. Her students do their homework at the school or public library or at home, and she says that access has not been an issue. "The kids love that it's not just a picture in a book," she says. "They can click on items in the picture and get detailed explanations and can listen to pronunciations and definitions."

If your district is not ready to abandon its physical textbooks, you might be interested in what's at the Vail School District in Colorado. Superintendent Calvin Baker says his teachers have moved away from "the standard march through the textbook, chapter by chapter," and are using the Internet to find the best tools to teach every lesson. He says it's like downloading one song instead of buying the entire album. "Rather than getting a whole set of textbooks, teachers can find the material they need to teach specific standards."

Another interesting option is Classmate Math's "textbooks with the teacher inside." Each lesson in these online offerings features a video of a teacher going over a problem. "Students can't learn math from a book," says Mike Maggart, the company's CEO. Kelly Ward, an eighth-grade Algebra 1 instructor at the Duchesne Academy in Houston, likes that the practice problems in the Algebra 1 Classmate provide verbal explanations for all of the steps in the practice problems. "My students watch the video examples and do the practice problems for homework the night before I teach the lesson," she says. "Instead of doing the nuts-and-bolts they've already mastered, I can do enrichment activities or delve deeper into the subject."

www.classmatemath.com