Headaches and Textbooks

Besides dealing with migraine headaches this past week, I was trying to narrow down my choices in new textbooks for my classes. Choosing a textbook in the past has not been easy for me. In fact, in the past I would have described it as a big pain, kind like the headaches I had this week. So I tried not to change textbooks unless I absolutely had to. Unfortunately, I couldn't put if off much longer. Mainly because I will be teaching a brand new class this summer so I didn't have an old one to go off of. So I buckled down and started exploring.

Holy Toledo there are a lot of options out there these days. And wow, textbook publishing companies have come a long way. I was exploring one book's online resources and was just amazed. There were not just powerpoints and textbanks available. These days you can get tailor made textbooks (order the chapters as you'd like them to appear--or add your own content.) Many companies even have their books put online so the students end up paying less than they would for a hard copy. There are also tons of web resources and actictivy sites that come with particular books. This particular site I looked at today even had a job opportunity and internship section. Pretty cool! Add on top of that iclickr questions ready to "cascade" directly into the corresponding powerpoints and I was about hooked! This one company even has content and quizzes that are ready for import directly into Desire2Learn--no respondus needed!!!

I haven't been this excited about a textbook in a very long time. Previously the mere thought of having to choose a new textbook and thinking about having to retype a whole new set of quizzes and chapter resources was enough to give me a headache. Had I known it was going to be this exciting I might not have put it off. In fact, maybe seeing the advances the publishing companies have made maybe helped cure me of my migraines. Ok I guess I won't go that far. But let me just say it has been very exciting to not only be free of headaches today, but to also feel freed by my textbook choice. Wooo Hooo!!!