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Today at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Founder of Khan Academy , Salman Khan, took the stage to share a few quick stats on the growth of his online video education platform. For those unfamiliar, Khan Academy is, as John Batelle noted this afternoon, one of Bill Gates’ favorite educators . It also happens to be one of mine, but I thought you’d probably resonate a bit more with Bill Gates. But Khan Academy is the institution of Salman Khan, who brought the idea of educating young people, self-starters, people who learn at their own pace — online. “Educational”-type YouTube videos have now been around for years, but Khan Academy’s repository is pretty ridiculous.
Khan Academy Triples Unique Users To 3.5 Million
QuickWire: Students' e-Book Use Has Flatlined Since 2008 - Wired Campus
November 4, 2011, 3:08 pm By Alexandra Rice 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.
DURHAM — A new digital textbook program launched this semester at the University of New Hampshire Whittemore School of Business and Economics has saved students more than $70,000 in textbook costs. While UNH has been expanding its digital textbook offerings, this is the first time an entire class has used only a digital textbook. Instead of purchasing hard copies of their textbook, the more than 600 students enrolled in Prof. Ross Gittell's "Introduction to Business" course at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics paid just $33.25 for unlimited online access for the term. Textbook prices represent a large out-of-pocket expense for students; conventional hard-cover textbooks average $150 each. Textbook prices have increased 22 percent over the last four years, quadruple inflation, according to the Student Public Interest Research Groups.
Digital textbooks save UNH business students $70K | SeacoastOnline.com
This month, Indiana University made agreements with a software company and five publishers that influence the economic terms for the future of e-textbooks.
Indiana U. Helps Shape Economic Terms of eText Transition
POSTED AT 07:45 PM ON Sep. 20, 2011 iTunes did it to CD stores. Redbox and Netflix did it to Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. Now Courseload and IU are doing it to college bookstores as eTexts are finally starting to find their way into college classrooms. A new agreement between IU and numerous electronic text publishers will allow students to purchase their class materials at a fraction of the price they would pay otherwise. Students will have access to highly discounted digital or printed copies of their textbooks for their entire college career, according to the agreement.
Is this the end of the line for college bookstores? | Commentary
E-Textbooks | News Indiana U Strikes Cost-Cutting Deal with E-Text Publishers By Dian Schaffhauser 09/13/11 Indiana University (IU) has negotiated new publisher agreements that are expected to reduce the costs of e-textbooks for students, extend the periods in which they have access to the texts, and give them more flexibility in how they use the digital material. The current set of agreements applies to e-text publishers John Wiley & Sons , Macmillan's Bedford Freeman & Worth Publishing Group , W.W. Norton , and Flat World Knowledge .
Indiana U Strikes Cost-Cutting Deal with E-Text Publishers
Saylor Foundation Kicks Off Open Textbook Challenge
E-Textbooks | News Saylor Foundation Kicks Off Open Textbook Challenge By Tim Sohn 09/12/11 The Saylor Foundation is offering $20,000 to college textbook authors willing to allow free use of their publications by students and educators. The deadline for the first wave of funding is Nov. 1. The non-profit organization is seeking authors who will agree to license their work under a Creative Commons license, which helps creators retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make various uses of their work.Research Center: Technology in Education
Published: September 1, 2011 The rapid and constant pace of change in technology is creating both opportunities and challenges for schools. The opportunities include greater access to rich, multimedia content, the increasing use of online coursetaking to offer classes not otherwise available, the widespread availability of mobile computing devices that can access the Internet, the expanding role of social networking tools for learning and professional development, and the growing interest in the power of digital games for more personalized learning. At the same time, the pace of change creates significant challenges for schools. To begin with, schools are forever playing technological catch up as digital innovations emerge that require upgrading schools’ technological infrastructure and building new professional development programs.
Students stage 'textbook rebellion' at University of Maryland
College activists and professors will tour campuses nationwide to lobby for more low-cost textbook options, including open online textbooks By Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor Read more by Denny CarterPearson goes open source with Plug and Play
01.09.11 | Anna Richardson Taylor Pearson has embraced an open-source approach to digital content, making its proprietary content available to third-party digital developers. The publisher officially globally launched its Plug and Play platform today [1st September], which gives in-house and external developers the chance to use Pearson-owned content to create digital applications. Pearson announced the project in May with news of an open application programming interface (API) for its DK Eyewitness Guide to London .
New Pew study on Higher Education and the Digital Revolution anticipates digital textbooks
August 29th, 2011 · by spolanka · No Comments Picked up a tweet today from @goodtokno about this new Pew report, The Digital Revolution and Higher Education . Some snippets of the study are listed below, taken from the Pew study website.For college students heading to campus, hitting the books may no longer require sturdy backpacks and strong arms. Campus bookstores have increased the number of digital textbooks this school year, as students weaned on Facebook and iPads seek virtual alternatives to heavy tomes. Digital textbooks are projected to account for 10 to 15 percent of course materials sold by the fall of 2012, compared with just 3 percent of the $5.85 billion sold last year, according to the National Association of College Stores. “There’s been a boom in digital titles this year,’’ said Miguel Suarez, general manager at the MIT Coop, the campus bookstore for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. This year, 25 percent of the textbooks for sale at the store are available digitally, compared with less than 10 percent last year, said Suarez.
More college bookstores, students are choosing digital textbooks - The Boston Globe
Vendors, Ed Tech, and Higher Ed: Becoming Better Friends « higher education management group
Technology often has “unintended consequences.” The increased use of technology in higher education has, for example, increased the dependence of these institutions on the vendors that build and market educational technology. This wasn’t the intention, it just worked out that way.Wired Campus
Like many other colleges, Southern New Hampshire University is experiencing an online-education boom . But look under the hood of its digital learning operation, and what you’ll find in many ways resembles traditional education: students forking over substantial tuition payments to study in small, professor-led classes that last from eight to 11 weeks. So what innovation will put that model out of business? Answering that question will be the responsibility of a new two-person “innovation team” at Southern New Hampshire. It’s an unusual job description: Disrupt the disruptive innovation.Anyone who has been following the travails of the publishing industry knows that the business is in the throes of widespread disruption, thanks to the rise of the web and digital publishing, and what Om has called the “democracy of distribution.” But as author and academic George Monbiot points out in a recent piece in The Guardian , there is one large publishing market that not only remains undisrupted but continues to produce huge returns for those who control it: the publishing of academic journals . Why has this market been able to resist the tide of change sweeping through the rest of the industry, and what will it take to finally disrupt it? As Monbiot notes, while newspapers like the New York Times and Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times have erected paywalls that are aimed at charging readers pennies per copy for their digital content, reading a single article in an academic journal published by a company such as Reed-Elsevier or Wiley can cost you as much as $40 .
So when does academic publishing get disrupted?
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