Since the beginning of the year, I have been informally field testing Beyond Books (www.beyondbooks.com), an online curriculum product, with my 9th grade gifted classes. The site would be appropriate for standard classes as well. I have used Beyond Books curriculum as a substitute for a take home textbook for my History classes and as an additional tool for my Language Arts classes. It has an attractive interface and an exceptional level of functionality.

The site essentially is a combination of text, video and audio clips, pictures, and links, across a wide range of subjects. The basic content is generally comparable to a standard textbook, but where the site excels is in the enrichment sections. They are found in a separate left border of a content page and in additional pages of links.

The links are diverse to engage various learning styles and are appropriate, well screened, and continuously updated. The navigation structure is intuitive and well organized. I prepared questions for the kids to answer and built online forms so their answers could be saved into a database for easy grading. Some of the comments they wrote were: "…The most interesting article was the one about the creation of the wheel, from the use of the rollers, the sledge, and the combination of the rollers and sledge;" "…I like this website because it combines pictures with facts and other information. I found it interesting. It is amazing how far the world has come;" "…My overall opinion of the Greek section would be that it is very helpful. I enjoyed reading about the different information about the thinkers and Alexander the Great and the other people. We wouldn't have the knowledge of physics or math or any other subject, so that really helped me a lot to know were everything originated."

The biggest frustration is obvious. Not all of my students have Internet access. My solution was to extend my timelines for getting the assignments done. With a few extra days, most are able to find an opportunity to access the site and complete the task.