When the dam breaks… — from learning with ‘e’s by Steve Wheeler

Excerpt:

Publication of research is one of the most important facets of academic life. I can’t stress enough how important it is for good research to be as widely and swiftly disseminated as possible. Without it, our practice is less likely to be informed, and more prone to repeated errors. As a researcher myself, I take this challenge very seriously. Along with other educational researchers, I attempt to identify key issues for investigation and then spend considerable time and energy examining as much of the terrain that surrounds my research question as I can. Once I have analysed the data, I am usually able to arrive at some conclusions and write some form of report, which is likely to include a set of recommendations that I hope will benefit my community of practice. Such findings should be published widely to inform the entire community. This is the way it should be. And yet often, sadly, it just doesn’t happen.

From DSC:
Steve, I was unsuccessful in leaving a comment on your posting here…but I celebrate your walking the talk on this and for pushing the envelop on the proliferation of open access journals. And thanks for making some recommendations in your reports — for taking some stances. I was greatly disappointed in my ID Master’s Program to find how few scholarly articles took any sort of stand and asserted much of anything to move their communities of practice forward.

 

 

Pearson and Google jump into learning management with a new, free system — from The Chronicle by Josh Fischman

Excerpt:

One of the world’s biggest education publishers has joined with one of the most dominant and iconic software companies on the planet to bring colleges a new—and free—learning-management system with the hopes of upending services that affect just about every instructor, student, and college in the country.

Today Pearson, the publishing and learning technology group, has teamed up with the software giant Google to launch OpenClass, a free LMS that combines standard course-management tools with advanced social networking and community-building, and an open architecture that allows instructors to import whatever material they want, from e-books to YouTube videos. The program will launch through Google Apps for Education, a very popular e-mail, calendar, and document-sharing service that has more than 1,000 higher-education customers, and it will be hosted by Pearson with the intent of freeing institutions from the burden of providing resources to run it. It enters a market that has been dominated by costly institution-anchored services like Blackboard, and open-source but labor-intensive systems like Moodle.

Adobe intros iPad app creator for InDesign — from The Journal by Kanoe Namahoe

Excerpt:

Adobe is looking to Single Edition to be an affordable way for freelance designers and organizations of any size to expand their digital publishing efforts, said Todd Teresi, vice president and general manager of Media Solutions at Adobe, in a prepared statement. ” Adding Single Edition to the Digital Publishing Suite family shows Adobe’s commitment to making digital publishing available to businesses of all sizes–from freelance designers to small design firms to large global publishers.”

Indiana U. helps shape economic terms of eText transition — from convergemag.com by Tanya Roscorla

Excerpts:

As course material shifts from print to digital, Indiana University advocates on behalf of students for lower prices, more choices and common software platforms.

Based on feedback from students and faculty, Courseload rewrote the platform in HTML5 this summer.

When the university asked students why they liked e-textbooks better, 69 percent cited instructor annotations, followed closely by sustainability, cost, weight of books and student annotations.

 

Presentations from the Digital Book 2011 Conference — from idpf.org with a special thanks going out to Mr. Steven Chevalia — who had pointed me to a great presentation by Liisa McCloy-Kelley:

Learning to Juggle and Picking the Right Balls
(AKA adapting organizations for the future of digital publishing)

Liisa McCloy-Kelley

Liisa McCloy-Kelley
VP, Director of eBook Production Strategy & Operations, Random House, Inc

Liisa McCloy-Kelley is VP, Director of eBook Production Strategy & Operations at Random House, Inc. where she has been an eyewitness to an evolution in the way that books are produced, marketed and sold for more than 20 years. She currently leads the team responsible for eBook development and production and keeps Random House on a focused strategic path for digital product development. She has spoken at a variety of conferences and has taught at Wellesley, NYU and Yale. As a digital book evangelist, she has given up reading in print form to become an expert in the variety of digital reading systems and the ways they can present content.

Example slide:


Pearson acquires Connections Education
Gains leading position in fast-growing market for virtual schools

Excerpt:

(PRWEB) September 15, 2011
Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, [announced on 9/15/11] the acquisition of Connections Education from an investor group led by Apollo Management, L.P.

Through its Connections Academy business, the company operates online or ‘virtual’ public schools in 21 states in the US—serving more than 40,000 students in the current school year. These virtual charter schools are accredited and funded by the relevant state and are free to parents and students who choose a virtual school in place of a traditional public institution or other schooling options.

Virtual schools serve a diverse population of students including those who may be gifted, struggling, pursuing careers in sports or the arts, in need of scheduling flexibility, or who have chosen home schooling. It is a large and rapidly-growing segment in US K-12 education: in 2010, 48 states and Washington, D.C. had virtual school programs and 27 states allowed virtual charter schools. Approximately 200,000 students attended full-time online courses and an estimated 1.5 million students took one or more courses online. (Source: Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning, 2010, Evergreen Education Group).

Currix.com: The Place to Buy and Sell Digital Content for Innovative Education — from Currix.com; originally saw this at Audrey Watters blog

Excerpt from Audrey’s article:

Currix is launching its beta today, aiming to become a destination for teachers to discover just these sorts of resources. It’s also a marketplace for this content: teachers will be able to monetize the lessons, activities, logos and more that they upload there. The prices range from free to a few dollars for activities to up to several hundred dollars for entire courses.

Also see:

http://www.currix.com/

 

 

From DSC:
This reminds me of a graphic I periodically post:

The Power of Online Exchanges

 

 

 

 

Amazon.com -- Connecting readers and writers

Video: Hands-on with Inkling 2.0, the iPad textbook — from gigaom.com by Colleen Taylor; my thanks go out to Mr. Johnny Ansari for this resource

 

A screenshot from GigaOM’s video demo of Inkling 2.0

Excerpt:

This week, digital publishing startup Inkling debuted the 2.0 version of its software, which provides interactive, digital versions of college textbooks for the iPad.

The San Francisco-based startup is just down the street from GigaOM’s office, so I headed on over to Inkling headquarters on Thursday to get an in-person demo from the company’s Founder and CEO Matt MacInnis. In short: It’s so awesome it actually makes me want to buy college textbooks again, just to play with the app some more.

 

 

From DSC:
Why can’t these materials from publishers come right into an  8′ x 6′  “interactive whiteboard” (for lack of a better term) so that the professor can annotate/manipulate them in front of the classroom?

See:

Daniel Christian: The Chalkboard of the Future

and here

 

Inkling 2.0: When a textbook becomes more than a textbook — from hackeducation.com by Audrey Watters

From DSC:
Audrey explores the trend that “books” are becoming more “app” like — and will likely be increasingly available as downloads via the Internet/cloud.

 

 

A very interesting concept — game-like reading on tablet devices — from Walrus Epub:
Walrus Epub Demo#3 – Kadath— my thanks to Mr. Steven Chevalia for this resource

Very interesting concept -- game-like reading!

Excerpt:

  • The new video demo made by the Walrus studio, involving ePub3 with a huge use of HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript.

From DSC:
A good example of how books are moving to ebooks which are then moving to applications.

 

Khan Academy integrates with digital textbooks — from Mashable.com by Sarah Kessler

Excerpt:

E-textbook maker Kno announced Monday that it will integrate thousands of tutorial videos from Khan Academy into its books.

 

Also see:

Teaching secrets: Teaching students how to learn — from Edweek.org by Cossondra George

Excerpt:

Awareness of common pitfalls and effective strategies can support your efforts to help students “learn to learn” throughout the school year…

 

From DSC:
I sure wish instructional designers, subject matter experts, professors and teachers could annotate their “books” to give concrete, practical ideas and strategies that would help students to better study, understand, and remember the relevant materials.  My early take on this might be achieved via a multi-layered, digital textbook approach that would hopefully address metacognition and help students learn how to learn:

 

 

What the Kindle textbook rental program portends for higher education — from xplana.com by Rob Reynolds

Excerpt:

Almost as soon as the press release hit the Internet yesterday, I began fielding questions about Amazon’s new Kindle textbook rental program. What does this mean for publishers? How will this affect textbook prices? What impact will it have on institutions and their students?

While the general answer to all of these questions is “We don’t know yet,” there are a number of projections I think we can make based on current market trends. Before launching into those projections, however, let’s take a quick look at what the Kindle textbook rental program actually offers.

© 2024 | Daniel Christian