6 companies aiming to digitize the textbook industry — from Mashable.com by Sarah Kessler
On 05/11/2011,
in digital learning, digital textbooks, e-books, e-readers, publishing, tablets, textbooks,
by Daniel Christian
On 05/10/2011,
in change, colleges, community colleges, digital textbooks, disruption, e-books, e-readers, future, higher education, new business models, organizational change, publishing, reinvent, tablets, universities,
by Daniel Christian
Stepping up to the Genius Bar — from CampusTechnology.com by John Waters
As they reconsider their role on campus, college bookstores take inspiration from the Apple Store.
Excerpt:
“The advent of this technology isn’t going to eliminate the need for college bookstores,” insists Isabella Hinds, director of digital strategies and products for Follett Higher Education Group. “It’s disruptive–or it will be, eventually–but the role of the bookstore is already evolving. The college bookstore of the future is likely to be a very different environment. The digital textbook is going to be one of a range of course-material offerings…delivered on a variety of devices. As these options proliferate, the expertise of the bookstore personnel will be much more important. They will become trusted advisers who can talk knowledgeably about the strengths and weaknesses of increasingly sophisticated and complex products.”
In other words, the college bookstore of the future is going to look a lot like an Apple Store.
On 05/04/2011,
in art, career development, creativity, new business models, photography, publishing,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
For those students out there who need to have a professional-looking, hard-copy based portfolio of their work, Blurb.com is an excellent choice.
On 04/27/2011,
in business, digital learning, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, innovation, new business models, publishing, strategy, vendors,
by Daniel Christian
Pearson acquisitions — from FutureLearn.org by George Siemens
Excerpt:
Education is on a path to globalization, roughly where businesses were in the 1970s. No clear leader exists, conglomerates haven’t made a huge impact yet, technology is marginally used for conducting business, and acquisitions to expand market capacity are rare. That’s changing. Pearson is rapidly pursuing acquisitions. The education sector, from the stance of corporations, is ripe for innovation. For startups this is a great opportunity. The Silicon Valley effect (create a startup with the intention of being purchased by Google, Microsoft, Facebook) is starting to gain traction in the education sector.
On 04/07/2011,
in e-books, e-readers, mobile learning, mobile technologies, multi-touch, multimedia, new media literacies, publishing, tablets,
by Daniel Christian
EDUCAUSE Review
Volume 46, Number 2 | March/April 2011
Getting a Handle on Mobile: Perspectives
Features
On teaching
Mobile Literacy
Mobile Literacy
David Parry
“The future our students will inherit is one that will be mediated and stitched together by the mobile web, and I think that ethically, we are called on as teachers to teach them how to use these technologies effectively.”
David McCarthy
“The current optimal e-reading solution for higher education is a robust laptop home base with an ecosystem that interacts with tablets and e-readers for mobile consumption.”
On iPads
Why Mobile?
Why Mobile?
Mary Ann Gawelek, Mary Spataro, and Phil Komarny
“With their students, faculty have become co-learners and pioneers in the classroom. With no models to work from, they had to explore, practice, and discover the iPad’s potential for expanding learning.”
On websites
Mobile Matters: Communication Trumps Technology
Mobile Matters: Communication Trumps Technology
Susan T. Evans
“Mobile is the future for content delivery. Colleges and universities need to establish a strategy now and make the decisions necessary to take advantage of this communication opportunity.”
Jim Davis and Rosemary A. Rocchio
“This device-agnostic framework and approach has huge practical advantages in that we can reach the vast majority of our mobile community regardless of what device they are using and we can readily accommodate ever-changing devices.”
“The best I can hope to do is keep an eye on the high level industry trends and directions, and then once we’ve identified those trends, ride them as best we can to where we think they’ll take the market.”
On 04/05/2011,
in creativity, digital audio, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital video, e-books, e-readers, mobile technologies, multi-touch, multimedia, publishing, tablets, tools,
by Daniel Christian
Also see:
- Mag+ Tablet Publishing Tools Now Available for All Publishers — from Mag+
- Bonnier Gives Away Its New iPad Magazine Builder — from paidcontent.co.uk
On 03/23/2011,
in change, changing business models, cost of getting a degree, digital learning, digital textbooks, disruption, e-books, e-readers, multimedia, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, publishing, textbooks,
by Daniel Christian
Pearson & McGraw-Hill make multi-million dollar investment in Inkling — from Kirsten Winkler
It seems as if the latest study from Xplana in which they predict that the tipping point for digital textbooks is as near as 2015 has opened up the wallets of two major publishers for an undisclosed “multi million Dollar” investment.
Inkling, the maker of the iPad application and platform which delivers enhanced and engaging textbooks, leaving the “flat, PDF-based digital textbooks” behind is the beneficiary and it could give the startup a competitive edge over the well funded competitor the Kno.
But as money is not everything Inkling, Pearson and McGraw-Hill also made some significant content commitments, boosting the number of titles available on the Inkling platform…
Also see:
- Publishers Invest in Inkling, Producer of Digital Textbooks — from The Chronicle by Josh Keller
- Digitizing an Industry
Matt MacInnis — Founder and CEO, Inkling
Bootstrapped Publishing – DIY FTW — from thinktiv.com
On 03/14/2011,
in digital textbooks, open courseware and systems, publishing, textbooks,
by Daniel Christian
7 things you should know about open textbook publishing — from Educause, March 2011, by Judy Baker (Foothill College) and Jacky Hood (Foothill College)
On 03/03/2011,
in mobile learning, mobile technologies, personalized/customized learning, publishing,
by Daniel Christian
On 03/03/2011,
in e-books, e-readers, new business models, publishing, tablets, tools,
by Daniel Christian
Textbook publisher announces ‘app’ approach to learning materials — from The Chronicle by Jeff Young
Long Beach—The phrase “there’s an app for that” may be coming to textbooks.
Today a major textbook company, Cengage Learning, announced a new e-textbook publishing platform that lets professors plug in apps, some made by other software companies, to add to traditional textbook content features like tutoring services or the ability to trade margin notes with other students.
The system is called MindTap, and it is scheduled to be announced at the annual TED conference here. When Chris Vento, Cengage’s executive vice president for technology and development, explained the system to a reporter, he felt the need to put the word “textbook” in air quotes, since traditional textbook content is a small part of the new product. These digital textbooks essentially bundle together several products sold by Cengage and its subsidiaries, including their electronic test-bank system, called Aplia, as well as videos and other materials that the company owns the rights to, including the archives of Newsweek. And MindTap allows professors to customize the presentation of the material, by adding their own slides, video lectures, articles, or free online content from elsewhere.
On 02/19/2011,
in attention, business, convergence, copyright/ownership/NFTs, digital audio, digital storytelling, digital textbooks, digital video, disruption, future, interactivity, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, publishing, storytelling,
by Daniel Christian
.
Brief summary/notes from DSC:
Per Kevin Kelly (Feb 2011), the future is about 6 verbs:
- Screening — we are moving from being “people of the book” to “people of the screen”
- Interacting
- Sharing
- Accessing — not owning
- Flowing — streams/flows of data and information, tags, clouds, not pages, real time, always on (24x7x3765), everywhere, no sense of being completed, feeds, flows of data, books will operate in this same environment
- Generating — not copying; pressure on things to become free; value is in things that cannot be copied (easily or cheaply). We want “easy to pay for but hard to copy”; things such as:
- immediacy
- personalization
- authentication
- findability
- embodiment
- interpretation
- accessibility
- attention
Originally from — and see:
- Gerd Leonhard at the Futures Agency.com
- …and with thanks to O’Reilly for publishing this!
On 01/27/2011,
in India, innovation, mobile learning, new business models, publishing, vision/possibilities,
by Daniel Christian
McGraw-Hill and Wipro to develop mConnect — an affordable mobile learning platform — to reduce skills gap in emerging markets — from McGraw-Hill.com
Excerpt:
“Through advances in mobile learning, McGraw-Hill and Wipro have an unprecedented opportunity to deliver high-quality, low-cost education to students and workers in rural areas and cities with limited access to resources,” said Harold McGraw III, chairman, president and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies, who made the announcement in Davos. “In a country with more than 700 million cell phones, mobile learning will help level the playing field for education in India in ways never before possible. The success of our pilots in India will serve as a powerful example of how business, schools and governments around the world can harness the power of mobile learning to give more people the skills to succeed in the global Knowledge Economy.”
On 01/15/2011,
in change, changing business models, dangers of the status quo, digital textbooks, disruption, education reform, education technology, elearning, new business models, online learning, online media, open courseware and systems, publishing, tools, vendors,
by Daniel Christian
100+ online resources that are transforming education — from Mashable