District Administration - October 2009 - (Page 37)

Readers’ Choice top100 products 2008 versions will eventually integrate the digital assessment, teacher tools and student activities that have been developed as supplements to the paper textbook. With states such as West Virginia poised to revise the adoption process to include e-textbooks and Texas mulling the use of traditional textbook funds for digital learning content, the opportunities have increased as well for educational software publishers, especially as school districts pay more attention to their state standards than to the trajectories of their textbooks. “Over the past three years, there’s been an explosion of interactive programs that meet large numbers of standards,” Bridges points out. Mark Schneiderman, the senior director of educational policy for the Software and Information Industry Association, cites a 2006 survey of district curriculum directors in which 80 percent agreed that textbooks—both print and electronic— will give way to a digital core curriculum. “ e stage is set for a more interactive, multimedia, adaptive resource that fundamentally redeﬁnes what a textbook could be,” Schneiderman says. “ ere are still a number of challenging factors, from state regulation to professional development to equal access, but there’s an inevitability to where we are going.” DA Ron Schachter is a contributing writer at D A. Discover Potential. Create Achievement. Predict, diagnose, measure, report, communicate, engage, and instruct—Acuity™ is the award-winning InFormative Assessment™ solution that delivers all the necessary building blocks to drive informed, targeted instruction throughout the year. Acuity helps educators improve student achievement in core content areas by: • Assessing understanding of state standards and curriculum • Predicting performance relative to state NCLB exams • Providing actionable, easy-to-use reports • Assigning engaging Instructional Resources • Enabling teachers to create custom assessments Resources CK-12 Foundation, ck12.org CourseSmart, coursesmart.com Houghton Mifﬂin Harcourt, www.houghtonmifﬂinbooks.com K12, www.k12.com OdysseyWare, odysseyware.com Pearson, www.pearson.com VitalSource Technologies, vitalsource.com Visit AcuityForSchool.com Copyright © 2009 by CTB/McGraw-Hill LLC. All rights reserved. Acuity, the Acuity logo, and InFormative Assessment are trademarks of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. www.DistrictAdministration.com AC_DA_10-09_v-a_ta.indd 1 October 2009 37 9/11/09 4:52:51 PM http://www.AcuityForSchool.com http://www.ck12.org http://www.coursesmart.com http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com http://www.k12.com http://www.AcuityForSchool.com http://www.odysseyware.com http://www.pearson.com http://www.vitalsource.com http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - October 2009

District Administration - October 2009
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Security
College Prep
Stimulus Monitor
Administrator Profile
Professional Opinion
Crisis Response
Tech Disruptions
Digital Classrooms Take Flight
Measuring Success in Harrisburg
Reaching Graduation with Credit Recovery
Almost There?
Back to School for Retired Baby Boomers
Problem Solution
New Products
Product Focus
How Well Does This Web Site Work?
Understanding the Times

District Administration - October 2009