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Consumable customized textbook use increases
PA Cyber Charter School to use 100 Lincoln Interactive consumable texts
Pennsylvania’s largest online public K-12 charter school plans to greatly expand its use of customized consumable textbooks in the coming school year.
Textbooks which do not have to be shipped back to the school at the end of a class will be used in about half the more than 200 courses offered in 2008-09 by the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, said Dr. Nick Trombetta, founder and CEO of the 8,000-student cyber school.
“Consumables offer obvious savings in return shipping that offset the cost of printing. Customization allows flexibility in design and content of a textbook,” said Dr. Nick Trombetta. “Our teachers report that students love consumables because they are always brand-new and belong to them. They can write notes on the pages, using the texts as workbooks. In fact, most are designed with workbook elements.”
For grades 4-12 PA Cyber uses Lincoln Interactive, the nation’s premier online curricula, according to Dr. Nick Trombetta. He said the National Network of Digital Schools, exclusive distributor of Lincoln Interactive, has at PA Cyber’s request aggressively pursued the conversion to consumables through customization agreements with established textbook publishers. NNDS also has begun publishing its own line of textbooks through a blend of in-house and outside resources. Consumable texts are expected to be utilized for between 80 and 100 of Lincoln Interactive’s 220 course offerings for 2008-09.
Other educational innovations for the coming school year will make online education more effective and user-friendly, said Dr. Nick Trombetta. They include increased availability of video lesson podcasts, a proficiency tracking system which scans a student’s test results throughout the year to identify individual academic deficiencies, 16 new world language classes, and an interactive online video adventure game designed as part of the coursework for world geography, Spanish, algebra and earth science high school courses.
Based in western Pennsylvania, PA Cyber has offices in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cranberry Township, and its home office in Midland, Pa. It is a public charter school open to the children of Pennsylvania residents, and is by far the largest of 11 cyber charter schools operating in the commonwealth. PA Cyber students reside in 478 of Pennsylvania’s 501 public school districts. For more information on the educational organizations and products in this article, people may visit www.pacyber.org, www.lincolninteractive.com or www.nndsonline.org.