KQED’s interview with John Sipe, senior vice president, national sales manager at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

Since last fall, 400 California middle school students have been using the iPad to learn Algebra with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Fuse program. This first app, Holt McDougal Algebra 1, is an interactive version of the textbook, and with it, students get feedback on practice questions, they can write and save notes, receive guided instruction, and access video lessons.“We like to say that the course is ‘re-imagined,’” said John Sipe, senior vice president, national sales manager at HMH. “It’s a lot more than just adaptation. We know that it’s a more iterative process than a revolutionary process in moving things to mobile delivery to a place like iPad.”

Preliminary results show that 78% of the students using the iPad app scored Proficient or Advanced on the California Standards Test, while the traditional textbook using students scored 59% Proficient or Advanced.