What motivates a student to go above the basic requirement and self-motivate themselves? We may never know!
I have had a few years of experience with the math curriculum in my classroom being completely digital with no text book. When the lesson leans more towards a teacher-centered classroom and we work through the online resource Agile Mind together, students seem not to enjoy it as much as individually getting on a device to work through it, but more students complete the required task that day. So this is why I balance my lessons with both teacher centered and student centered activities. When students get to be on a device working through the lesson with a guided student activity sheet, there are a few that get off the website and choose to do other things and there are others that work much slower and never get through as much as what we could have done together.
I think it is important though to teach students that independently working on a lesson and using the technology to their advantage is the best college preparation or real work readiness they could learn.
I also incorporate a program called ALEKS in my curriculum and students hate the "explain" button. Their first reaction is to raise their hand and ask for help when they can't figure something out and there is a great tool on there that explains step by step how to do every problem. But many students lean towards the lazy side and can more quickly ask me to explain it to them than to read it themselves and independently figure it out. I still struggle with getting students to WANT to learn through the technology and not always by someone telling them the answers.
I am a student myself when it comes to always being a learner. Teaching students to demonstrate their understanding when they aren't given explicit requirements is an idea that I'm still learning.
