Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A New Tool in the Classroom Grabs the Spotlight

January 21, 2011 | 5:25 PM | By Tina Barseghian

HMH Fuse

It’s easy to figure out why a 13-year-old’s eyes would light up if you give her an iPad. Think of all the possibilities: YouTube! Movies! Music! Angry Birds!

But what about algebra? Would she be as excited about learning the quadratic equation just because it’s presented on a shiny tablet? Turns out that — at least for the first few months of the class — it does significantly boost the kid’s interest in the subject.

One of the country’s biggest textbook publishers, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is banking on it. In my interview this week with John Sipe, HMH senior vice president and national sales manager, a few theories about the company’s Fuse pilot program are coming into focus.

1) Convenience is crucial. A 300-page textbook is replaced by a 10-inch tall, 1.5-pound sleek tablet that features all the same content, plus interactive tests, writing pad, calculator, hundreds of videos, and access to a world of information. “With a textbook, if you want to learn more about one of the examples, you have to stop looking in your book and go online to our website and navigate that particular section and view our video there. Instead, on the iPad, you simply click on ‘view video’ and up comes our professor, Dr. Edward Burger,” Sipe said.

2) Kids still need their teacher. In the eight-grade classroom I visited today at Presidio Middle School in San Francisco, the teacher played an integral role in the classroom. She asked the class questions, had students come up to the board to solve equations, and worked alongside them as they watched videos. As Sipe put it: “Let students cover the basics on their own, and let teachers delve into enrichment and individualized learning. That’s what the good teachers are telling me.”

3) Learning happens outside the class. Whether they’re working out algebra problems on their iPad or watching a video tutorial on the Khan Academy website, or trying new math apps on their own at home, mobile devices are making it possible and irrefutably convenient and easy to learn anywhere, anytime. And kids are taking advantage of it. The one who figures out how to get the best content to learners will be the winner in this rapidly changing world.

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FILED UNDER: Research, Teaching With Tech, HMH-Fuse Pilot Study, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, iPad

Algebra, Meet the iPad: Part II

January 20, 2011 | 12:02 PM | By Tina Barseghian

HMH Fuse

The iPad’s impact on the role of the teacher, paid content versus free online and open-source content, and the learning process.

Will eighth-graders who use the iPad to learn algebra do better than their textbook-using counterparts? That’s what publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Fuse pilot program will determine at the end of the school year. In yesterday’s post, HMH’s John Sipe talked about how anecdotal surveys, halfway through the study, have shown higher engagement level and interest in algebra, partly due to the convenience of having all the content on the app. But how much of that engagement is related to the novelty of using the gadget has not been determined, he says.

Here’s the rest of our interview.

Q. Do you have any information you can share about grades so far?

No, because the study’s still underway. But what we’ve heard from teachers is very encouraging. We’ve been able to see students’ time on task, how long they were working on each problem, what they clicked on, what they avoided, which problems they got right and wrong. We have a lot of data that helps us to understand where students are spending their time, and where we need to spend our time as instructors.

I could see a day when the links to the Khan Academy live right in our app, right alongside our videos.

What I suspect is going to happen is that the performance between the print version and app version is going to be similar. But I do think we’ll see better performance with the app in terms of time spent on each task. So far anecdotally kids are spending more time actually involved in doing algebra in the classroom using the iPad, and that’s going to be key – because their engagement and interest is sustained. They’re going to be watching more videos because they’re more convenient to watch. They’re doing more of the practice problems because they’re more engaged in doing so because the “check your understanding” is right there and they don’t have to go look in another place.

Q. Did you train teachers on how to use the app?

Interestingly enough, the device is so easy to use, we didn’t have to spend a whole lot of time on training the teachers, because remember, this is just a student app. The teachers are still using their teachers’ guide from print textbooks. This is just how the student accesses content. So the student is not issued a book, just an iPad, and all their content exists on the iPad. They use it on the bus, at home with their families, they bring it back to school and use it in class. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Research, digital textbooks, e-readers, HMH-Fuse Pilot Study, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, individualized learning, iPad, Technology in Schools

Algebra, Meet the iPad: A Year-Long Study Explores Learning With the Tablet

January 19, 2011 | 12:06 PM | By Tina Barseghian

HMH Fuse

Whether or not the iPad is the Holy Grail in education has yet to be determined. But when one of the biggest textbook publishers in the world invests in a pilot program specifically for the Apple tablet, it’s a good indication that, at the very least, it’s on the short list.

Since last fall, 400 California middle school students have been using the iPad to learn Algebra with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Fuse program. This first app, Holt McDougal Algebra 1, is an interactive version of the textbook, and with it, students get feedback on practice questions, they can write and save notes, receive guided instruction, and access video lessons.

“We like to say that the course is ‘re-imagined,’” said John Sipe, senior vice president, national sales manager at HMH. “It’s a lot more than just adaptation. We know that it’s a more iterative process than a revolutionary process in moving things to mobile delivery to a place like iPad.”

The pilot study, which includes a total of 1,000 students — 600 receiving the same instruction with traditional textbooks, without iPads — will go through to the end of the school year, after which, the research firm Empirical Education, will evaluate and deliver results by the summer.

Here’s the first part of my interview with John Sipe.

Q. Will HMH create apps for other devices, too, or just the iPad?

Right now, the apps are developed exclusively for the iPad. It was the first device that we could take full advantage of. It can support multimedia components, the multi-touch environment. And it’s the first device that realized the vision that we’ve all had for a student learning device, a tablet.

But that said, we do have to be where schools are. So if tomorrow, dozens of school districts decided to adopt the Motorola Zoom Android-powered tablet, we’d be forced to take a hard look at porting our app over to Android. Many big app providers produce an Android version as well.
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FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Research, Teaching With Tech, HMH-Fuse Pilot Study, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, iPad

Learning Algebra with the iPad

January 18, 2011 | 5:36 PM | By Tina Barseghian

Chirantan Patnaik

“Is this the device or is this the first device? It’s hard to say. But what we can certainly say firmly is that it’s the best thing to have come along so far. The reason we did this test is to learn as a content provider, how do we take a really well-designed, high-functioning mobile device and re-imagine curriculum, students interacting with learning in their own way? And that’s the exciting part with what we’ve done and what we’re trying to do.”

- John Sipe, Jr. Senior Vice President, National Sales Manager, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, on the company’s year-long pilot program with the iPad algebra curriculum. I’ll be posting the interview in its entirety over the next couple of days.