On May 16, 2012, at 3:46 PM, JJ wrote: > My son attends an online charter school -- Connections Academy. He connects > using his ipod, ipad or Mac -- sometimes using the Apple TV. If he's at the > library or at a friends' he can still do schoolwork! LOL All his textbooks > are online although he does have hardback at home as well. His classes, > English, Algebra, Social Studies, etc. meet once or twice a week in a virtual > classroom with a teacher.
Do you know what format they use for the algebra book? One of the problems I've had with online textbooks is that the technical books are in PDF form. PDF is not a comfortable on-screen textbook format because it doesn't flow the text onto the screen. It's not too bad on a computer with a large monitor, but on an iPad, it's pretty tedious unless full page fits nicely on the screen without the exponents and subscripts becoming invisible. The epub and mobi ebook creation tools and readers are very deficient. They supposedly support HTML5, which has MathML as its mathematics display standard, but the tools for creating MathML are very awkward and I've yet to see a reader that can handle even mildly complicated equations. Apple recommends MathType for doing embedding equations , but it's really painful to use it when one is used to industrial strength tools like Mathematica or LaTeX. A newer method, based on a Javascript technology called MathJax, may turn out to be the best solution.
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