An e-Textbook for the Future Mathematics Classroom

Abstract

For over one hundred years, the environment of mathematics classroom has been supported by chalk & talk teaching style, in which we use blackboard, chalk, notebooks and textbooks. In these days, we can use new teaching styles with computers and LCD projectors, which are being disposed to all classrooms (e-Japan strategy of government). We call it presentation style in this paper. In presentation style, we project the textbook to the screen with computer and LCD projector. Comparing to the printed textbook that is static, we can present electronic textbooks (e-textbook) more dynamically. The presentation software such as PowerPoint is a good tool for general use but we believe that we can develop appropriate software for educational use. In this paper, we consider the requirements of the textbook-viewer and develop our software dbook, which clears the requirements. The original ideas of the dbook had developed through the experience of developing commercial software for the presentation style. With the new developed tool, dbook, now, we can develop commercial digital textbooks (e-Textbooks) and many teachers can make their own e-Textbooks by themselves. It will be able to enlarge the presentation style to more interactive way even if teachers use the textbook. At the last part of the paper, we evaluate the power of dbook through the two years of experimental use.