Here is the latest information regarding the new 2009 edition.
Post any questions here and we will do our best to answer them.
Here is the transcript of the video for people having trouble viewing the video and for our Math-U-See customers who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Well, you know that in December we made our first video announcement of the new materials that were coming out. I wanted to give you plenty of time to plan your curriculum purchases for the next year. Now we have talked to the printers. We’re pretty sure that we’re going to be able to release all of these books in the beginning of April. We’re hoping to have the books in the reps’ hands by the beginning of April, and then you can order from them and expect them by the second week. I hope this gives you plenty of time. Now for those of you that are going to fairs, you will find some of the new materials there as it’s being released, and maybe I’ll get to see you at some of those fairs. But for right now, this is our plan.
Now, why did we do this? In case you haven’t seen the first video clip, we did this because after years of receiving feedback and good ideas from you, we decided to make the leap and improve the binding while we were at it. We thought, Well, let’s improve the look of the book, and let’s improve the grammar of the book. So we hired professional editors, and they’ve gone through all the books and cleaned them up. We’ve also hired graphic arts designers. So inside the book now you’ll notice a much more professional, cleaner look, which will make it easier to teach math, and that’s our ultimate goal.
Now, I’m going to show you the books, and then we’re going to go through some of the other improvements and enhancements that we have. I chose Epsilon to be our sample. We’ve done Beta through Geometry and Stewardship this year, as you can see on our list. We’re going to be doing Primer, Alpha, to the lower level books and Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus and hopefully Calculus for 2010. We do hope to have Calculus ready as of the fall of 2009, so be in touch about that.
Now the hardback books . . . this is the instruction manual. This is part of the instruction pack. You get this along with the DVD instructions. Now this is a hardback book, slick picture. Inside you’ll notice not only is it a cleaner look but we printed on both sides of the page and used heavier paper. The content is the same in all of our books except that we’ve improved the solutions. The solutions are step-by-step complete solutions for every problem. We’ve always had complete answer keys, and many of the solutions were step-by-step, but now we’ve made all of them. This is particularly helpful in the algebra, pre-algebra, geometry series, but it goes all the way down. So this is your hardback book. Isn’t that nice?
Okay, we also made changes to the student books. As you know they’ve been done in comb binding for years, and we’ve gone back and forth on the different options. After talking with customers, making some in the different options, polling our customers, we’ve decided to go with a perfect bound book. It’s also got a glossy laminate cover. The inside, as you’ll notice, is printed on both sides of the page, which gives you a lot more space to work the problems right on the problem. Before you used to have to work the problem on the opposite page, now you can work right along with the page. Now these pages are getting a little bit heavier. If you want to keep it in one book, you have that option. It sits nicely on your shelf. If you want to tear out the pages, these are also perforated with three-hole punch, so if you want to tear out a lesson at a time and give it to the student, you can keep it in a binder. You have lots of options. Even for our lefties out there you can tear out the pages and use them nicely without the binding getting in the way. Even though they’re perfect-bound books, they lie surprisingly flat. So we hope that you’ll like these.
Now, the test booklet is also the same. This was one of the reasons why we have the perforated pages. Often the parents and teachers like to give these one at a time to the student so they don’t have access to all of the tests at the beginning of the year.
So there you go! Now, we changed the design, and if you’ll look below—hopefully this will be on the blog—if you look down below, you’re going to see a new price list. You’re also going to see a sample lesson from Epsilon so you can look at it more closely.
Members of the Math-U-See community that are hearing impaired have been requesting close caption or subtitles. We opted for subtitles. These are currently on Primer through Delta, and we’ll be adding these throughout 2009. If you have a DVD that says “Copyright 2009” you have that option.
We will also be carrying the current comb-bound books until supplies run out. We probably have enough books to get us through the beginning of April and a little bit past that, so there will be a price savings for those. It’s the same content. In fact, if you have a current teacher’s manual and you buy our new student books, they work together beautifully, no problem. The only exception to that is you might want to consider getting an Algebra 1 solutions supplement because over half of Algebra 1 is now complete solutions. It’s a lot, it’s good, it’s very helpful, and that’s a book that requires a lot of care to make sure you’re getting the answers correct. But the other books synchronize perfectly.
Okay, so, with the new binding, the complete solutions, the improved design, how much is this going to cost? I know that’s why you’re watching this, to see how much this is going to cost. So here’s what we have. Currently all of these prices are going to stay the same for the comb binding, but for all of the new improvements, they’re going to go up 5 dollars. That’s the overview. So this right now, the Beta instruction book, has been 35, the instruction pack is now going to be 40. The student kit will now be 25. And this will be true for all of the Greek level books. So you’ve got 40 for the instruction, 25 for the student. I’ve already told you the pattern; I could have made this a math lesson and let you figure this out. So 40 and 25.
Now Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Geometry, as you know, they have an instruction pack as well as a student text, as well as an honors book, student and test. So we’ve had tremendous feedback on this. People have really liked the honors. Some people didn’t know whether to get it or not. As you know, the cost of producing a book—maybe you don’t know. I’m learning this. A lot of it is in the binding. So what we decided to do was combine the student book and the honors book. This one used to be 20, and the honors book was 10, and so instead of then adding 5 more dollars, we can continue to charge 30 dollars. So putting those two together in one book, the instruction manual will have the answer keys for both and you will still have a separate test booklet. The instruction manual will now be 55. It used to be 50 so it’s another 5 dollar change. This is true for all of these books. The instructions 55, 30, instructions 55, 30. Stewardship is now going to be 25 and 55. So all of the instruction packs for these levels are the same and the student kits. This will be the same as the student over here.
So there’s what you’ve been wanting to know. If you can get the comb-bound books we will have them till supplies run out. But we won’t be able to produce them later because one of the reasons we can pull this off is we have to buy large quantities these perfect-bound and hardback books to keep the cost low for you. But if we were to produce this same double-sided look in the comb binding we couldn’t afford to do it in our limited runs.
For those of you that are watching, you may be living right now in Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, U.K., Singapore, the Philippines. You’re wondering when these changes will be available to your culturally specific edition. Because as you know we’ve changed the Math-U-See U.S. edition to fit with your particular country, so we’ve changed your measurement, we’ve changed your currency, we’ve changed word problems, even word spellings so that this would be user friendly for your country. Now these changes will be available as soon as we can, as soon as we get done making all the changes in the design and the formatting for the U.S. Then we can begin to make them ready for your country. So hold on! We’ll get them as soon as we can.
Now for those of you that are still watching—I hope you are—this is one of the big reasons we’re making these video announcements several weeks before the release date because we want you to have plenty of time before you go to a fair or order online to make sure you’re ordering the correct stuff because our replacement policy will always remain the same as far as we can tell if you return the materials within 30 days in good condition, etc. It’s written down there on the order form. But we hope you’ll make the decision because we can’t exchange comb-bound editions for the new binding. It’s going to be very difficult, so make an informed decision.
Now the reason we did all this, again, is because we listened; we got great feedback from you. We want to make this program as user-friendly for you as possible. We want math to be a success in your home, and I believe these changes will help you teach math to your children.
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