Melissa in NC Posted May 15, 2014 Share Posted May 15, 2014 Reposting this from the Chemistry pinned posting Review of CK12 Chemistry: Background: I have a bachlors in Chemical Engineering and worked as a lab rat in college. As of the current edition, I can not recommend this text. I am working though the last chapter and I have been frustrated with many errors in the text and answer key. Basic calculations are just wrong and balanced chemical equations are incorrect. It could easily lead to hair pulling out if you were not strong in chemistry trying to figure out where you went wrong when the text is wrong. Since this is a second edition, some material was moved from chapter to chapter but the questions and test were not updated so material in Chapter 14 test was not presented until Chapter 15. I had to pretake the test to make sure the questions were appropriate and cut and add questions. Several of the linked materials were broken or difficult to get to. The formatting was not printer friendly. I have a friend who teaches Chemistry from Apologia in a co op so I was able to compare notes with her. CK 12 covers a number of topics not covered in Apologia. This can be a disadvantage since covering the whole books can get overwhelming. My friend deemed several topic too advanced for a high school text. (She taught high school chemistry before having kids.) If a revised edition and a lesson plan was released, I would consider this book again. Unless you have a very strong background in chemistry, this is not the text for you. Quote MultiQuote Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jilly Posted May 15, 2014 Share Posted May 15, 2014 I appreciate you posting this.The CK12 text was one of my possible choices for next year, but now I have marked it off my list. Thanks. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkT Posted May 16, 2014 Share Posted May 16, 2014 Reposting this from the Chemistry pinned posting Review of CK12 Chemistry: Background: I have a bachlors in Chemical Engineering and worked as a lab rat in college. As of the current edition, I can not recommend this text. I am working though the last chapter and I have been frustrated with many errors in the text and answer key. Basic calculations are just wrong and balanced chemical equations are incorrect. It could easily lead to hair pulling out if you were not strong in chemistry trying to figure out where you went wrong when the text is wrong. Since this is a second edition, some material was moved from chapter to chapter but the questions and test were not updated so material in Chapter 14 test was not presented until Chapter 15. I had to pretake the test to make sure the questions were appropriate and cut and add questions. Several of the linked materials were broken or difficult to get to. The formatting was not printer friendly. I have a friend who teaches Chemistry from Apologia in a co op so I was able to compare notes with her. CK 12 covers a number of topics not covered in Apologia. This can be a disadvantage since covering the whole books can get overwhelming. My friend deemed several topic too advanced for a high school text. (She taught high school chemistry before having kids.) If a revised edition and a lesson plan was released, I would consider this book again. Unless you have a very strong background in chemistry, this is not the text for you. Thanks for the review since it is open source maybe someday it will be useable. Having too much material is not considered a problem. A lesson plan is needed for most textbooks. Maybe CK12 would work better if it had some volunteer editors (such as yourself) that could suggest changes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimmermom3 Posted May 16, 2014 Share Posted May 16, 2014 Thanks, Melissa, for taking the time to write up a review. Many really excellent chemistry books are available used for for around the cost of shipping. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa in NC Posted May 18, 2014 Author Share Posted May 18, 2014 Having too much material is not considered a problem. A lesson plan is needed for most textbooks. Maybe CK12 would work better if it had some volunteer editors (such as yourself) that could suggest changes. I did submit many errors to their clunky online reporting; however, I never knew if anyone read them. Towards the end of the book, I just gave up spending 5 minutes at a time reporting the problem and concentrated on making my own answer key. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest CK-12 Foundation Posted May 20, 2014 Share Posted May 20, 2014 Melissa - We're sorry you're seeing errors in the Chemistry Flexbook. We update our content with all errors reported on a daily basis. Please make sure you go back to ck12.org and download the book from there to make sure you have the latest, most updated version. If you have any questions, you can always reach us at support@ck12.org. Happy teaching, Your CK-12 Team Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa in NC Posted May 20, 2014 Author Share Posted May 20, 2014 Melissa - We're sorry you're seeing errors in the Chemistry Flexbook. We update our content with all errors reported on a daily basis. Please make sure you go back to ck12.org and download the book from there to make sure you have the latest, most updated version. If you have any questions, you can always reach us at support@ck12.org. Happy teaching, Your CK-12 Team Unfortunately, I never received that feedback and after I downloaded the answer key, I was locked out of the answer key. If the answer key was updated, I can not see the new version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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