Apple's iPad textbook program helps students improve math scores

PanARMENIAN.Net - A yearlong pilot program with digital textbooks on Apple's iPad found that students' algebra scores increased by 20 percent when compared to a curriculum with traditional books.

According to Apple Insider, in the heels of Apple's e-textbook announcement in New York City this week, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced the results of its "HMC Fuse: Algebra I" pilot program at Ameila Earhart Middle School in California's Riverside Unified School District. The Algebra I digital textbook is touted as the world's first full-curriculum algebra application developed exclusively for Apple's iPad.

In its test run, the "HMH Fuse" application helped more than 78 percent of students score "Proficient" or "Advanced" on the spring 2011 California Standards Test. That was significantly higher than the 59 percent of peers who used traditional textbooks.

The first pilot program took place during the second trimester of the 2010-2011 school year, when students using "HMH Fuse" were said to have scored an average of 10 points higher than their peers. But that number jumped even higher for the California Standards Test in spring 2011, when "HMH Fuse" students scored about 20 percent higher than students who used traditional textbooks.

A white paper on the HMH Fuse Pilot Program is available for download from the publisher. Other schools and students can download the "HMH Fuse Shell" applications available for free on the iPad App Store, with curriculums available as in-app purchases within the applications.