Here is the reality. Textbook companies are there to make money.
They all offer reduced textbook rates for their ebooks, but
there is a catch. The $15 book that you bought only lasts you
one year. You have to spend another $15 the next year for the
same book (albeit updated we hope) for another student. We were
on a 5-7 year cycle for printed textbooks that cost us $60-$85.
That is $85 over 7 years. Spending a small amount every year
cost us almost the same money! Here is the big idea. WRITE OUR
OWN! If I had my wish I would get about 15 of us science
teachers (or math or whatever) together for a week in the
summer. We would sit down with the new standards, our labs,
ideas, and technology and develop a curriculum that was actually
made by teachers with activities that work and are malleable and
scale-able to different classes. We then meet periodically
throughout the year to go over what is working or not and make
changes. Here are some of the specifics I was looking at. - The
text would include various techn