Group items tagged

"What often gets lost in discussions about digital textbooks is that most of them are created through processes meant to scale. Frequently, publishing companies take content intended to be printed and put it through some kind of automated conversion that turns the book into an e-text. Often the results are anemic, little more than PDF files with functions such as text highlighting thrown on top. Two professors at tiny Albion College in Michigan have concluded that the results aren't good enough. Neither instructor has a background in mobile application development, but they've each developed an app for their respective courses that is helping their students become more engaged in the content they're teaching."

We should definitely interview these guys.

"John William White's First Greek Book was originally published in 1896. The book contains a guided curriculum built around the language and vocabulary of Xenophon's Anabasis. This digital tutorial is an evolving edition that is designed to run on both traditional browsers, tablet devices, and phones. Each lesson includes drill and practice exercises in addition to the text itself. The site also includes tab-delimited files for all of the vocabulary and grammar that can be imported into flashcard programs."

"Dear SUNY Faculty, We would like you to consider being one of the first to produce an Open SUNY Textbook. We invite you to apply by submitting a brief proposal by December 17th to publish your textbook as an open educational resource and print-on-demand title, made possible thanks to a SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant and the support of SUNY Libraries & SUNY Press. If selected, you will receive an award of $3,000 upon the completion of all work and required forms. An additional $1,000 will be paid to you if you decide to include and assess student involvement in the design and development of the textbook.* Although an open textbook is free online, you will be eligible to earn royalties on sales of the print-on-demand edition, if applicable."

"Major publishers in higher education have already been collecting data from millions of students who use their digital materials. But CourseSmart goes further by individually packaging for each professor information on all the students in a class - a bold effort that is already beginning to affect how teachers present material and how students respond to it, even as critics question how well it measures learning."

"The interactive e-book publisher Inkling has finally released an HTML5 version of its app, meaning that its 150 titles are now available on both the iPad and the Web."

"Textbooks are gaining, though, as publishers take advantage of the popularity of tablets like the Kindle and iPad, expanding their catalogues and offering products like rental digital books that expire after a semester or two. "

"Internet2, a consortium of 221 colleges and universities, which last year brokered landmark deals with Box.com and Hewlett-Packard that gave its members discounts on cloud computing services, announced today that it had entered into a contract with McGraw-Hill, a major textbook publisher, aimed at creating similar discounts for students on digital course materials."

"Apple's new iBooks textbook market saw lots of activity over the weekend as users downloaded 350,000 copies of books, according to Global Equities Research. If iBooks catches on in a big way, it'll certainly be profitable to Apple. But whether it will be a good deal for authors and publishers has yet to be determined."

"Wheeler believes that Apple's announcements will be a shot in the arm for the kind of digital text programs he supports. "The economics of college textbooks are structurally flawed and are failing students, authors, professors and publishers," Wheeler told Ars. "Different approaches, including free resources and companies trying to restructure the industry-as Apple did for music-are in play.""

"California State University is running one of the nation's largest pilot studies of e-textbooks, involving thousands of students on five campuses, and one of the biggest findings so far boils down to the cliché the devil is in the details. Whether or not students liked their digital textbooks depended on what rules publishers set on how the digital books could be used."

"it's only a matter of time before, for example, a major publishing company sells textbooks through Amazon for use on the Fire and hooks in powerful interactive web applications for assessment, tutoring, or simulations, all on a little 7″ device that fits in any students backback."

". CSU has announced a three-year deal with Nature Publishing Group for low-cost, interactive, web-based textbooks with access options for disabled students. "

"Students' use of electronic books has grown little, if at all, over the past three years, according to international surveys of more than 6,500 college students conducted in 2008 and again this year. The finding, from ebrary's Global Student E-book Survey, surprised audience members when the survey report was previewed this week at the Charleston Conference, a gathering of librarians, publishers, and e-book vendors. Even so, presenters said they felt confident that the number of e-book users would grow more rapidly over the next six months, and that libraries and colleges must be ready to handle the demand."

"etextbook sales are only in the single percentage range of textbooks. So what is the problem? The problem is one of expectations. "

"Boundless, a Boston-based start-up that makes textbooks available for free on-line by curating information from Wikipedia, government publications, Creative Commons licenses and other free sources. In April, Boundless raised its second round of venture capital funding-$8 million from a group led by Venrock. Not surprisingly, Boundess has also raised the hackles of publishers. In March Pearson Education, Inc., Cengage Learning Inc; and Macmillian Higher Education filed a suit charging Boundless with copyright infringement-a claim it denies"