This digital textbook distributor has been selling textbooks via their iPad app for the past year and a half, and they’ve had a Facebook app for nearly that long. And today they’re bringing all that experience in producing quality digital textbooks to Android. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Last year South Korea started on a plan which would ultimately replace all textbooks with digital textbooks that students would read on tablets and PCs.  Some teachers are objecting to the change they see in students behavior and study habits, and this has led to a plan for

Here’s more from a Washington Post article:

Education leaders here worry that digital devices are too pervasive and that this young generation of tablet-carrying, smartphone-obsessed students might benefit from less exposure to gadgets, not more.Those concerns have caused South Korea to pin back the ambition of the project, which is in a trial stage at about 50 schools. Now, the full rollout won’t be a revolution: Classes will use digital textbooks alongside paper textbooks, not instead of them. First- and second-graders, government officials say, probably won’t use the gadgets at all.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

CourseSmart

The update adds a new reading mode called Accessible View, which lets the student see the original print layout of the textbook. The update also features several improvements to the user experience, including faster page turns, more accessible annotations via a new index, stream-lined navigation, and other subtle improvements under the hood.

Jill Ambrose, chief marketing officer at CourseSmart “We’re a hub that offers services to students, that allow them to purchase or rent textbooks at about 60% discount on print prices; we offer faculty free access to the CourseSmart cataglog for choice control and sampling—88% of all U.S. higher education faculty have CourseSmart accounts; we distribute textbooks through stores in physical form or with download codes.”

This release also marks an expansion of the CourseSmart digital textbook platform which enables its catalog to be integrated with a school’s LMS. This extra functionality is going to enable better interaction between students and teachers.

via

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Utah is by no means the first state to push for open source digital textbooks; several states including California and Washington have launched similar programs. This program, while it may have been encouraged by other states, grew out of 2 year digital textbook pilot programs. The pilots were led by David Wiley of BYU’s McKay School of Education, and they were funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The textbooks for the pilots were drawn from the CK12 Foundation.

“Utah’s open textbooks are a great use of technology,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Larry K. Shumway. “Texts get into classrooms quickly and can be updated as needed rather than on a publishing schedule – something that’s particularly important in science. The open textbook also adds to Utah’s reputation as the most cost-efficient school system in the country. This is a fantastic way to get the latest textbooks into the hands of Utah’s nearly 600,000 public school students.”

Utah is planning to have texts available for all grade levels, and the books will be made available in time for the fall semester.

via

image by El Frito

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Didacta Education Trade Fair is being held in Hannover next month, and there’s going to be a number of apps, services, and new teaching gadgets on display. The Educational Media Association will also be releasing a preview of their new textbook platform.

Details are still thin on the ground, but the new platform is going to be vendor-neutral, and it is planned to run on all operating systems and devices. The scheduled launch date is set for some time this fall, around the beginning of 2012/2013 school year. There’s going to be both online and offline modes, and teachers and students will be able to purchase eBooks from different publishers and manage them on a shelf.

via

image by James F Clay

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The pilot programs, which are based on Indiana University’s successful eText model, offer universities the chance to lower the cost of digital course materials. Courseload assists the institutions in negotiating attractive volume price deals with publishers, znd everyone including students benefit from the program because it dramatically reduce costs while efficiently paying authors and publishers fairly for their digital work.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Chegg launched a digital textbook rental service back in August, and today they released an updated reading app. The app is written in HTML5, and it can be used in virtually any browser including the iPad.

The update adds a number of features, including crowd-sourced highlights, instant definitions, and access to Chegg’s Homework Help service. Simply highlight a bit of text and select “Ask A Question”. Chegg’s community of subject matter experts should be able to find an answer within 2 hours.

“At Chegg, we strive to make learning technology easier, more accessible and more productive for today’s college students,” said Dan Rosensweig, president and CEO of Chegg. “With Chegg’s all new cloud-based eTextbook Reader, we’re raising the bar on innovation and productivity for our network of students, creating a personal experience connecting them to the most important content and eLearning services they need to get better grades.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Kno Flashcards are going to automatically convert key term from within textbooks into interactive flashcards. Kno plans to offer over 40 million flashcards based on the glossaries and indexes of more than 150 thousand digital textbooks in their eBookstore.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

PaperC is a new German start-up with a novel payment plan. Rather than selling or renting complete textbooks, PaperC sells books by the chapter and even the page. It currently offers nearly over 14 thousand titles from 85 publishers.

In addition to its by-the-page system, PaperC is about to start testing a subscription service. Readers will be able to play a flat fee and use as many textbooks as they need. This new service is just beginning to be beta tested, but when it is released it’s expected to cost between 10 and 20 euros. That should put it well within the reach of the average student.

PaperC also plans to roll out improved Epub support, and it’s looking to make its content more usable on all Epub compatibility apps and devices.

via

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Earlier this year

The first phase of that program launched today.The Open Course Library was created by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, and it acts as a central repository for digital textbooks and course materials for the college classes with the highest enrollments. Right now only 42 classes are covered, and they’re grouped in the core requirements of math, sciences, and history.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Our new publishing relationships will enable us to continue expanding our footprint and further solidify our position as the world’s largest provider of digital course materials. The additional titles and content to our higher education catalog will allow more students and faculty to enjoy the benefits of our digital course materials, including anytime, anywhere access, cost savings and efficiencies, device agnostic applications and other digital benefits inherent in our offerings,” said Sean Devine, chief executive officer at CourseSmart. “We will continue to engage with other higher education-focused publishing houses to ensure we meet the growing demand for eTextbooks and other digital course materials.”

These new deals will expand CourseSmart’s catalog  to over 20 thousand titles and more than 90% of the core college textbooks, and all of these textbooks can be read in most web browsers as well as in iOS and Android apps. It also brings the count of CourseSmart’s publishing partners to 31, including a few of the larger textbook publishers like Pearson, Wiley, Cengage Learning, and McGraw-Hill Education.

image by Earlham College

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The university has also signed deals with textbook publishers for volume purchases of digital textbooks. Students on all IU campuses will be able to order digital textbooks from Wiley, Norton, and Flat World Knowledge and then read those textbooks using Courseload.

“IU’s model ensures that students will benefit from the cost savings and educational possibilities of eTexts and other online materials as their preferences shift to a blend of digital and print,” IU Vice President for Information Technology and Kelley School of Business professor Brad Wheeler said, adding that this agreement gives IU faculty new options for lower-cost, high-quality course materials.

While this new program will save students money, there is also a catch. The eTexts model utilizes a mandatory fee to obtain its substantial price advantages. If a given class uses a textbook offered by one of the participating publishers, the university will compel the students to participate. Also, the students may not actually be getting a discount here (compared to used and rental textbook prices), but that is a matter for another post.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

2010 was marked by a vast number of eReader and digital textbook pilot programs, and California had one of the larger ones: the Digital Marketplace. This is a state wide program that California has been working towards for several years now. The key eveny in 2010 was a 5 campus, 3 thousand student pilot program that California planned to expand to include all state universities.

The primary goals of the DM are to move the CSUS towards digital content while reducing cost and waste and  making it easier to for students and professors to find content. It’s not clear from the report whether the pilot program achieved these goals, but then again this was a pilot.  One goal that the pilot did achieve was saving students money; the report mentions that by switching to subscription based content, students collectively save saved $330,000.

You can find the complete report here. It’s 8 pages long and well worth a read.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Beginninng this fall, students at 3 Eminata Group campuses, CDI College, Vancouver Career College and Reeves College, will be able to get all of their course content via Pearson’s iPad app.These 3 campuses will be expanding their current pilot programs to include all students. Over the next 3 years, all programs  at all of the 38 Eminata Group campuses will be converted to digital textbooks to meet the diverse needs of students inside and outside the classroom. Hundreds of Pearson textbooks will be available through the eText for iPad platform, Pearson’s premier electronic book technology.

“We are committed to increasing access to flexible, affordable learning opportunities with programs and services proven to improve student achievement and retention,” said Don Kilburn, CEO of Pearson Learning Solutions. “Our collaboration with the Eminata Group leverages the iPad’s ability to provide students with a more interactive learning experience, so they realize their full academic potential and move into rewarding, successful careers.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Starting this semester, students will be able to download all support materials for their entire curriculum. It’s also going to be coming with some custom apps, because students willl also be able to read and handle confidential patient health information and that requires HIPAA certification that can’t be found in most apps.

The costs of the program provide a telling detail into whether its worth the expense. The new hardware is going to cost around $600 thousand, and the school spent about $100 thousand each year to copy, collate, organize, and distribute course materials.

Of course, money isn’t the only reason to switch to iPads. Students in the pilot program that was run last year were pleased with the reams and reams of class notes that they no longer had to carry around. “We get binder upon binder of notes, literally several feet of notes, and carrying them to the library or to class is just unrealistic,” Robert Stretch said.

via

image by bgolub

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.