MindShift » Pearson

Watch Out, Print Textbooks: Here Comes Inkling

Tina Barseghian — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:39:32 +0000

Inkling

Whether it’s the iPad that will shake up the print book industry, or some other tablet, it’s evident that education textbook publishers are going to have to adapt to the digital world.

Since the iPad is still the front-runner in the education realm, publishers have to learn to think of it not just as another medium for reading. They have to completely rethink the way content is consumed. And they’re looking to the pros – the engineers — to show them the way.

At the moment, it’s Inkling that’s trailblazing the path to re-conceptualizing the college textbook.

“The iPad is not a book. Too many publishers pretend it’s a book,” said founder and CEO Matt MacInnis to ReadWriteWeb. “We have gently disassembled the textbook.”

What makes Inkling’s apps unique is the fact that “content isn’t bound by pages or sections or chapters in the same linear fashion. Rather, it’s hierarchical, richly illustrated and augmented. It’s interactive. It’s social,” Watters writes. The digital versions include quizzes, interactive infographics, and a scrolling and searchable interface.

The San Francisco-based startup has grabbed the attention of the media as well as of leading publishers in the industry. In March, the company received a round of funding from Pearson and McGraw-Hill. By fall, Inkling plans to have about 100 of the most used textbooks available. The apps will cost about 20 percent less than print books, and students can purchase individual chapters for $2.99. The company’s also planning to offer the product in an Android version, the Google operating system, according to the New York Times.

Here’s what’s on the agenda for Inkling next fall:

The top 100 undergraduate titles from McGraw-Hill Higher Education

A comprehensive MBA curriculum, featuring 24 of the most popular business titles, from Pearson Education

A full line of medical textbooks, featuring Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, an imprint of Wolters Kluwer Health

Top undergraduate arts and sciences titles from Pearson Education

Top medical education and reference content from McGraw-Hill Professional

As far as how many students have crossed over to the digital side, at this point, it’s a chicken-or-egg question. E-textbooks made up only 2.8 percent of total U.S. textbook sales in 2010, according to the Times. Some students say they’d be willing to invest in a gadget like an iPad if half of their textbooks were available in digital editions, but exactly when that time will come, perhaps only Inkling has an inkling.

Content Providers Old and New Partner to Make Searching Easier

Tina Barseghian — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:37:33 +0000

Flickr:A Trying Youth

Google “photosynthesis” and you’ll see a long list of links to everything from Wikipedia to PBS to the University of Illinois, with plenty of YouTube videos thrown into the mix.

To streamline this somewhat random page of results for both educators and learners, a group of education content providers is teaming up to create a better defined framework for education-related searches online.

In a move that brings together for the first time traditional content companies and free, open content sites, the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) and Creative Commons (CC) are partnering to improve search results online the through the creation of a metadata framework specifically for learning resources. That means teachers looking for content — much of it aligned to Common Core standards — will be able to more easily find information they need. At least that’s the hope.

“This can do for students what John Dewey did for readers 150 years ago when he created standardized card cataloging.”

“Easy access to high-quality learning resources is the end goal of this project,” said Charlene Gaynor, CEO of Association of Education Publishers at the Context in Content conference today.

Many of the big-hitters on both sides of the spectrum are involved, including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), Curriki, McGraw-Hill Education, Monterey Institute for Technology in Education (MITE), Pearson, Promethean, Scholastic Inc., and SMART Technologies, BetterLesson.

“Educators and students miss out on education resources available online because it is takes too long or is too hard to find appropriate content,” said Catherine Casserly, CEO of Creative Commons in a press release. “A common metadata schema will make this search more efficient and effective so educators can quickly discover the educational resources they want, including those they can reuse under Creative Commons licenses.”

Today’s announcement follows on the heels of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Schema.org, a collaboration between the three major search engines that’s billed as a “major step forward in the evolution of search.”

Likewise, this collaboration is meant to “create a learning explosion,” said Shep Ranbom of ISKME. “This can do for students what Dewey did for readers 150 years ago when he created standardized card cataloging.”

The partners are hoping to have the function up and running in between six months to a year.

Weekly News Roundup

Audrey Watters — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:53:26 +0000

Flickr: WilliaC

While the federal government did avoid a shutdown this week, the budget negoations hammered out this week included some major cuts for ed-tech, including the elimination of the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program.
RIP Flip camera. Cisco announced this week that it was shutting down production of the popular video device. Although Flip cameras have been popular in the classroom, many industry observers say Cisco’s decision reflects the fact that people aren’t interested in single-use devices, particularly now that cellphones have good video capabilities.
The crowdfunding organization DonorsChoose.org announced a contest this week entitled Hacking Education. The organization is opening up its dataset – information about some 300,000 classroom projects proposed by 165,000 teachers in over 43,000 public schools that have inspired some $80,000,000 in donations. DonorsChoose.org is asking developers to build apps and perform analysis with the data. There are a number of cool prizes, including a grand trophy handed to you by Stephen Colbert (along with tickets to view a taping of The Colbert Report).
The Boy Scouts of America unveiled a new merit badge this week, for work in Robotics. Among the badge’s requirements, Boy Scouts will have to design, build and test a robot with at least two degrees of freedom and at least one sensor.
The winners of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup were selected this week. Imagine Cup is a student technology competition, and this year’s theme involved using technology to tackle the world’s toughest problems. The winners in the Software Design were the team from Arizona State University who developed a note-taking app for low-vision and legally blind individuals.
News broke this week that a school district in Auburn, Maine plans to equip all its kindergarteners with iPads next year, at a cost of around $200,000. Some have expressed concern that 5 year-olds are “too young” for the technology, but others insist that the devices are ideal for that age level. The state of Maine has long been on the leading edge of one-to-one laptop initiatives.
Ontario College of Teachers issued a professional advisory to its 230,000 members this week, an eight-page guide detailing warnings about appropriate use of social media. The advisory encourages teachers not to friend their students on Facebook or communicate with them via text- or instant-messaging.
The education company Pearson released the results of a survey this week, detailing the usage of social media by college professors. Pearson found that more than 90% of college faculty use social media in the workplace — that’s almost twice the rate of employees in other industries. More than 40% of respondents say they require their students to use of faculty say they require students to use social media as part of course assignments. Despite being avid users, faculty responding to the survey did indicate that they have some concerns about social media and privacy.

Pearson Tries Out the Tablet

Tina Barseghian — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 19:32:08 +0000

Lenny Gonzalez

I’ve been focusing the last couple of weeks on exploring Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s algebra iPad pilot program, but it’s worth noting that they’re not the only ones testing the waters.

Pearson Education, Inc. is piloting a similar program in Virginia with social studies curriculum, according to an article in the Boston Globe.

Clearly, it’s in the best interest of publishing companies to stay on the forefront of technological innovations as they occur. There’s a lot of money at stake.

The size of the educational market justifies significant outlays for such experimentation. The “educational materials’’ market was worth $8.1 billion in revenue in 2009, according to Simba Information, a media market research firm in Stamford, Conn. Pearson, which sells materials for levels from pre-kindergarten through college, is the largest educational publisher in the world, with global education revenues of $5.9 billion in 2009. Houghton Mifflin, which concentrates on the pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade market, had 2009 revenues of $1.7 billion.

The big prevailing question is whether a new device will continue to inspire kids to learn after the shine has worn off.

“Our interest is smarter books that keep kids engaged,’’ said Peter Cohen, Pearson’s chief executive for curriculum. “Is learning different, better, on the iPad? That’s what we’re looking at. If it’s not the right form factor, we’ll keep looking.’’

My guess is that with the expected flood of new tablets hitting the market, that question won’t be resolved for a while yet.