Online textbook loses its ‘text’

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Nathan Zhang

Freshman Jackson Trumpy reads from the English 9 textbook “Collections”. Freshmen have been frustrated with the online version for a long time. They have been forced to use the online version because there are not enough paper textbooks for freshmen to take home.

As students progress through the school year, freshmen English classes start utilizing new textbooks. But, because of the limitation of the paper version, students are forced to use the new, glitching online version.

Since the online version of the English textbook, “Collections,” is new, it continues to glitch, giving students difficulties logging on and accessing the online book.

Some freshmen English classes have even resorted to using an online website for reading “The Odyssey” because the textbook’s server was down for a couple days.

“The online textbooks are always giving me trouble. I’ve only got to use it once this year even though we had to use it multiple times,” freshman Max Snyder said.

Snyder is in Accelerated English 9, where he has had to read chapters from “The Odyssey” for homework. He, along with his classmates, feel that they should just be able to bring home their own textbooks.

When told that each English class holds only one set of textbooks, Snyder said, “That’s unfair. Why do we have to use a version that’s not from the textbook?”

Even last year, freshmen English classes used just the book until the end of the year.

“Last year, we got to bring home our own books. We did have to use a new textbook at the end of the year though. We had to use the online version once, so it wasn’t too bad,” sophomore Joshua Peck said.

This frustrates many freshmen, as they cannot fathom why they cannot do the same thing as they did last year. They wait, not so patiently, for things to go back to normal.