The edWeb - Registration. Reading 2.0 - Musings on the publishing revolution. Oregon schools find iPod Touch improves reading, math skills in students. By Chris Meadows Oregon school kids really seem to like iPod Touches (or should that be “iPods Touch”?). Two different, unrelated projects have come to light over the last few months using them to boost kids’ reading abilities. In the Canby School District, every third and fourth grade student has been issued an iPod Touch, which they use for reading and math exercises. Reports are that they do so quite well, too: In presentations, [district technology coordinator Joseph] Morelock has shown that several classrooms using the iPod touches generated better test scores than the district average.
Kids love the devices (as naturally kids do), but more than that, they allow the kids to go back and repeat exercises they had trouble with without public embarrassment. Meanwhile, in the Eugene School District, sixth-grade teacher Marilyn Williams is using iPod Touches to help her students with reading comprehension and retention, teaching from a sixth grade reader that comes with audio CDs. V. 22 #6 The Future of the Textbook « Against-the-Grain.com.
By Sara Killingworth (Senior Associate, Maverick Outsource Services Ltd.) sara@maverick-os.com and Martin Marlow (Principal, Maverick Outsource Services Ltd.) martin@maverick-os.com, www.maverick-os.com Etextbooks are the latest and, some would say, last major eBook category to finally start opening up to active experimentation and sales development worldwide. Over the last year or so we have seen a number of new and innovative business models, pricing ideas, and interactive or “born digital” products being explored by major Publishers as well as new market entrants. These new suppliers, distributors, and aggregators are developing some innovative approaches to eTextbook supply that are in some cases challenging, and in others sitting alongside the established players. Against the Grain asked Maverick Outsource Services to explore this debate in more detail and to co-ordinate a series of special report articles in upcoming issues regarding the emerging future for eTextbooks.
Open Content in Practice. Virtual Schools | Feature Open Content in Practice A virtual high school in Utah shuns textbooks and relies on open content for 100 percent of its coursework. By Bridget McCrea03/02/11 When Open High School of Utah started up in 2009, there were no textbooks to order, no buildings to construct, and no classrooms to outfit. Teacher-Developed Materials That's because the Salt Lake City-based public charter school utilizes open content coursework created by its instructors and made available online for all students. Open High School is a public charter school for Utah high school students. The brainchild of David Wiley, an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University and the founder of OpenContent.org, Open High School grew from its founders' desire to "see if a completely open content school would really work," said Tonks.
Adapting to Standards Using open content also allows teachers more freedom to adapt and flex when needed. Replacing a Pile of Textbooks With an iPad. Inkling When I’m not blogging away about technology for the Bits Blog, I’m also an adjunct professor at New York University in the Interactive Telecommunications Program. The program is a technology-focused graduate course, so it came as no surprise when four of my students walked into class in early April with fancy new Apple iPads in hand.
After the students got past the novelty factor, a debate ensued about how the iPad would fit into their school life. One factor the students discussed was the ability to carry less “stuff” in their backpacks: the iPad can replace magazines, notepads, even a laptop. LMS Vendor/Textbook Publisher Partnerships. Today Moodlerooms announced a partnership with Cambridge Global Grid for Learning that allows faculty and students to access content from Cambridge University Press, Reuters, Corbis, and other content providers from within Moodlerooms’ Joule platform.
As far as I can tell, this partnership is roughly similar to ones that Blackboard has previously announced with McGraw Hill and NBC. I expect to see more of these going forward, so it seems worthwhile to take a little time and look at the details of how these deals work for everybody. Let’s start with why these deals are happening. For the LMS providers, it’s a revenue stream. They get to charge content providers for access to the students and teachers. At a Deutsche Bank conference last September, Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen said, The publishers are essentially paying for storefront access. What does this integration look like? Google+ Comments. Open educational resources. Open educational resources (OER) are freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. Although some people consider the use of an open file format to be an essential characteristic of OER, this is not a universally acknowledged requirement.
The development and promotion of open educational resources is often motivated by a desire to curb the commodification of knowledge[1] and provide an alternate or enhanced educational paradigm.[2] Defining the scope and nature of open educational resources[edit] The above definitions expose some of the tensions that exist with OER: At the same time, these definitions also share some universal commonalities, namely they all: cover both use and reuse, repurposing, and modification of the resources;include free use for educational purposes by teachers and learnersencompass all types of digital media.[10] History[edit] Licensing and types of OER[edit] OER policy[edit]
Israel's Time To Know Aims To Revolutionize The Classroom. This is the story of Time To Know, an enigmatic Israeli startup that has somehow managed to remain under the radar of Israel’s tightly knit startup scene. What makes this feat wondrous is not only because of the daunting challenge the company has chosen to meet, but that it has quietly ramped to 350 employees and no less than $60M in funding—all without attracting attention.
Time To Know is the realization of a single man’s vision to un-root teaching methodologies from their 19th century origins and thrust them into the 21st century. The entrepreneur is Shmuel Meitar, co-founder of Israeli hi-tech posterchild Amdocs. To appreciate Meitar’s commitment, consider this: He is TimeToKnow’s sole investor. That’s right, the $60M the company has taken in funding all came out of his pocket. Time To Know believes there are three main reasons why today’s classroom is ineffective: First, relevancy—or rather, irrelevancy. Schools must also commit to provide their teachers with training and support. Hey, What About the ‘Net? | Symtext.
Interesting post this morning in The Chronicle of Higher Education. An opinion piece from David Lewis (dean of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis University Library and assistant vice president for digital scholarly communications at Indiana University) makes the by now well-known case that we need to lower textbook costs. The Chronicle’s tweet goes a tad further: @chronicle Textbook system is broken: high costs, poor info for students, bad books David’s basic case is this: we all know the system isn’t working.
Reduce costs, enhance pedagogy, increase student success, and change how textbooks and related course materials are created, distributed, and used. No disagreement here, quite the opposite, actually! Digital creation and distribution of educational content will utterly transform the textbook industry. The line between book and Internet will disappear. A few months ago I posted a tweet that said: The distinction between “the internet” & “books” is totally totally arbitrary, and will disappear in 5 years. Start adjusting now. The tweet got some negative reaction. But I’m certain this shift will happen, and should happen (I won’t take bets on the timeline though). It should happen because a book properly hooked into the Internet is a far more valuable collection of information than a book not properly hooked into the Internet.
And once something is “properly hooked into the internet,” that something is part of the Internet. It will happen, because: what is a book, after all, but a collection of data (text + images), with a defined structure (chapters, headings, captions), meta data (title, author, ISBN), and prettied up with some presentation design? An ebook is just a print book by another name Defining a book by what you cannot do This will change, slowly or quickly.
What lurks beneath the EPUB spec An API for books For instance: Related: CDWG - Using E-books in School: Negotiate, Train, Pilot, Expand. 21st Century Classroom: Transforming the Textbook In 21st century classrooms, blackboard chalk is on the endangered list, the pop quiz has been replaced with clicker questions, and bowling alley technology (overhead projector transparencies) has disappeared, thanks to digital projectors and document cameras. But if you’re going to point to any aspect of the classroom that still hasn’t covered much ground on its trip into the 21st century, it has to be the textbook. This ubiquitous accessory has been beset by editorial controversy as we have seen recently in Texas; has seen consistently high price increases of an average of six percent per year; and still inspires parental derision for the outdated information often portrayed.
And then there’s the matter of weight. The heft of textbooks was the subject of a 21-page report written in 2004 in California for the state’s board of education. Realigning the Budget with Netbooks Lorain City Schools is located in a city 35 miles from Cleveland. Digital Classrooms Take Flight. Five-year-old Empire High School, a low-slung, seven-building complex in the foothills east of Tucson, has plenty of new technology, including a one-to-one laptop program for all 850 students and a completely wireless infrastructure powered in part by rooftop solar panels. What it does not have are textbooks, a bold omission designed to focus on Arizona’s learning standards, tap the resourcefulness of the school’s teachers, and—according to educators here—fulfill the promise of the new digital environment.
It used to be that anyone who made it through the semester without cracking a textbook was supposed to be very brilliant or very lazy. But schools across the country—driven by concerns ranging from the financial to the pedagogical—are changing that stereotype, as they switch from conventional textbooks to electronic versions of the same or online creations of their own. California, acting on a mandate this summer by Gov. Schools such as Empire, part of the Vail (Ariz.) CES is over...now can we please get some e-textbooks? E-textbooks have been slow to catch on, partly because textbook publishers have a multi-billion dollar industry to protect and partly because devices suitable for accessing them either lacked functionality or weren't ubiquitous enough to be of benefit to students. However, if CES, a show by its very name focused on the consumer space rather than education or business, has shown us anything, it's that there are more than enough interesting devices available to let e-textbooks take off.
While it's true that first-generation e-readers and their e-ink displays made for easy reading of text-heavy books, the latest generation of devices and software seem happy to sacrifice that particular advantage for drastically increased functionality. As PCWorld notes, Are these devices truly e-readers? The whole point of electronic paper-based e-readers is that the display, which doesn't use a backlight, mimics the look of physical paper and is easier on the eyes than a bright, backlit LCD.
Trine U. School Requires E-Textbooks for Entire Curriculum - Wired Campus. Adoption of digital textbooks has moved at a snail’s pace on most college campuses. But at Trine University’s School of Professional Studies, that shift is being jump-started with a new collegewide mandate to adopt e-textbooks in all courses by January. The School of Professional Studies—which has 500 adult students enrolled in 10 degree programs online and at branch campuses across Indiana—hopes the e-textbook push will help students save money, boost sustainability, and enhance classroom and online instruction.
Starting next semester, faculty members will be required to teach from digital editions of their textbooks using the CaféScribe platform, operated by the Follett Higher Education Group. The Web-enabled e-textbook system allows students to highlight and take notes on the text while they read as well as compare notes and discuss their reading in online forums. Faculty members can also embed comments, links, and discussion questions into the digital text. According to Ms. MindShift | How we will learn.
The Xplanation. The Future of Textbooks in a Digitized World « Law, Technology & Arts Blog. James Proctor In January 2011, California start-up company Kno, Inc. announced upcoming beta testing of single and two-screen e-book readers specifically designed for use with electronic textbooks. The devices, consisting of 14-inch screens, replicate the size and appearance of a standard hard-copy textbook and allow users to apply “traditional” study techniques such as highlighting and margin notes. Kno intends to commence selling both products in early 2011. E-books are not without drawbacks, and their lack of accessibility for the blind has already been the subject of a lawsuit against Arizona State University settled last year. However, the recent proliferation of new general-purpose readers, growing public discontent with the textbook industry, and a California law requiring electronic textbooks in all primary and secondary schools by 2020 indicate that the days of a hard-copy textbook being the primary instruction aid are most likely numbered.
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