Science progression, e-Textbooks
Finding eTextbooks for this assignment, I was amazed at how many texts are available online, and at the broad range of levels also available -- from introductory courses to college-level. I wanted to think about a science curriculum arranged differently from the way typically done in Florida schools. My list starts in Grade 8 and continues to Grade 12, five books in sequence. I think the current arrangement in the State standards follows a notion that some subjects are inherently more difficult to grasp than others, such as chemistry and physics. I think we may be selling our students short, so I've arranged these science topics without regard to such perceptions of difficulty, and instead ordered them in a way that makes sense to me by scale. So, instead of an environmental or earth science base, I've started with the study of the fundamentals of our universe -- mass and energy; physics. Although a tough topic, this book is quite accessible. The courses then rise in scale: f...
