Rafter™ launches to revolutionize the entire course materials process for students, educators, and administrators, making education more affordable, accessible and effective — from Rafter
Rafter Delivers First-of-its-Kind Technology to Manage Textbooks and Digital Content On Campus and Online

 Excerpt:

SAN MATEO, CA–(Marketwire – Feb 28, 2012) – Rafter today launched as a new education technology company offering a network of software services that enable administrators and educators to better control costs and manage course materials for their students. Addressing higher education course materials management at an enterprise level, the Rafter Course Materials Network™ is the first suite of cloud-based software services that helps reduce costs for students and stores, helps educators discover and adopt the best materials, and provides college administrators with unprecedented power to control the complexities and reduce the costs of the entire course materials management process.

Rafter evolved out of one of the fastest growing education technology companies, textbook rental company BookRenter, which has saved millions of students more than $175 million across more than 5,000 campuses nationwide. In 2010, the company began to partner directly with schools to co-develop services to reduce the cost of and improve the experience associated with textbooks. Today, more than 500 schools have adopted BookRenter’s solution.

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See also:.

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rafter.com

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Also see:

Who decides what gets sold in the bookstore? — from paidcontent.org by Seth Godin

Excerpt:

I just found out that Apple is rejecting my new manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams and won’t carry it in their store because inside the manifesto are links to buy the books [at Amazon.com] I mention in the bibliography.

 

From DSC:
By the way, some nice quotes from the Stop Stealing Dreams page:

  • The economy has changed, probably forever.  School hasn’t.
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  • Our kids are too important to sacrifice to the status quo.

The Digital Classroom
Via:
Accredited Online Universities Guide

Addendum on 2/14/12 — also see:

openstaxcollege.org -- Access. The future of education.

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2012/01/Top-Publishers-2011-PW.jpg

Data via Wischenbart; Graphic via Publishers Weekly

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Also see:

How iBooks Author Stacks Up to the Competition [CHART] — from Mashable.com by Chelsea Stark

Author, Author! Apple, Apple! — from The Journal by Therese Mageau
Apple’s new interactive textbook authoring system might just revolutionize the way districts develop their own curriculum. 

iTunes U vs. Blackboard – A Look at Apple’s New Online System — from padgadget.com

Thanks to iPads and Kindles, E-Book Lending at Libraries Explodes — from ReadWriteWeb.com by John Paul Titlow

Why textbooks of the future are not books — from gigaom.com by Erica Ogg

Apple Jumps Into Textbooks — from the WSJ
With More iPads in Classrooms, Education Push Would Help Fend Off Android-Device Competition

Apple’s iTunes U Morphs Into a Tool for Full Online Classes — from Mashable.com by Sarah Kessler

Reinventing Textbooks: A Hard Course — from the New York Times by David Streitfeld

 

Also see:

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Donald Chan/Reuters
People flooded Foxconn Technology with résumés at a 2010 job fair in Henan Province, China.

Apple to announce tools, platform to “digitally destroy” textbook publishing– by Chris Foresman

Excerpt:

GarageBand for e-books

At the same time, however, authoring standards-compliant e-books (despite some promises to the contrary) is not as simple as running a Word document of a manuscript through a filter. The current state of software tools continues to frustrate authors and publishers alike, with several authors telling Ars that they wish Apple or some other vendor would make a simple app that makes the process as easy as creating a song in GarageBand.

Our sources say Apple will announce such a tool on Thursday.

 

Some thoughts/reflections from DSC:

  • If the educational publishing industry doesn’t want to help students out by greatly lowering their prices…
    (But don’t relax people in higher ed…most likely, we are next.)
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  • Another example of “the dangers of the status quo.
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  • We constantly need to be actively reinventing ourselves and our businesses so that we are staying relevant.
    (And at prices running up to and over $200,000 for 4 years of college — as of January 2012 —  the assertion that higher ed is not a business just doesn’t hold any water for me anymore.)
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Addendum later on 1/17/12:

 

Pearson and Knewton charge ahead with adaptive courses — from The Journal by Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt:

“Personalized learning is a linchpin for the overall future of education,” said Greg Tobin of Pearson. “Incorporating Knewton’s technology into our MyLab/Mastering programs is leading the industry’s charge toward this new era of customized and personalized education.”

“Students generate a tremendous amount of high-stakes data that Knewton can analyze to ensure they learn in the most effective and efficient way for each. It is a new frontier in education,” added Jose Ferreira, founder and CEO of Knewton.

AcademicPub adds 22 new publishers to its content library — from edukwest.com by Kirsten Winkler

Excerpt:

AcademicPub is an online platform for college professors that enables them to create custom print or digital textbooks. This way professors can pick the content relevant to their course only which leads to much lower prices for the students when they purchase the books.

Launched in April 2011 by SharedBook Inc., AcademicPub started with less than 20 publishers but the platform quickly attracted new partners and now offers copyright-cleared material from over 100 publishers including…


Why tablet publishing is poised to revolutionize higher education — from Mashable.com by Trevor Bailey

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Richer than their print counterparts, digital textbooks include a number of interactive features. They are not limited to static pictures, but can integrate video, audio, animation, interactive simulations and even 360-degree rotations and panoramas. In addition, universities have the ability to create custom, institutionally branded viewers with unique displays and navigation options.

Digital publishing allows professors or subject matter experts to self-publish their own educational materials or research findings and distribute the information on tablet devices. Teachers can iterate content quickly, better keeping pace in a world where knowledge evolves every instant. On a smaller scale, they can post lesson documents online for students, versus relying on hard-copy materials.

 


From DSC:
…and we’ll see what Apple says about this topic later this month; 2012 should be an interesting year indeed. I would like to see more of our professors’ e-books/self-published materials up on the Chalkboard of the Future:


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One part of the board could provide downloadable, discipline-specific templates

 

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Teaching resources could be downloaded by faculty and by students -- compliements of the publishers

 

From Daniel Christian: The future chalkboard is connected to various other systems and devices -- wirelessly and via wired connections.

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Blowing out the digital book as we know it– from MindShift by Tina Barseghian

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Inkling also produced the epic The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America. The book in its entirety costs $50, but you can also purchase individual chapters for $3 a piece. The new model makes book buying much like buying music — choose only the pieces you like best.  MacInnis fluidly demonstrates how to float from one chapter to the next, launch videos, close in on images, tap on sidebars and recipe instructions. It’s like watching a magician performing sleight-of-hand tricks.

From DSC:
Books — and textbooks — will continue to be more cloud-based, interactive, multimedia-based, and will be able to be completely up-to-date as they move more towards becoming like apps (vs. hard copy books/textbooks). I see more experimentation in terms of the implementation of social media tools as well as in trying out different business models.  However, when all’s said and done (at least for this next phase), I hope that we can get to the iTunes-like purchasing model mentioned above. I think students, faculty, and staff at educational institutions would benefit greatly from this. 

The Scholarly Kitchen - What's hot and cooking in scholarly publishing

 

Also see:

The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) is a project to create a common vocabulary for describing educational content. While there are many benefits to such a project, the main goal of the initiative is improve end-user search and discovery of learning resources. Read below for a general overview or visit our FAQ page for more specific details.

The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI)

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