Khan Academy Triples Unique Users To 3.5 Million. 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. The educational startup now counts over 2,600 videos in its library, with sessions or classes on everything from arithmetic to physics, including 211 practice exercises, to let students watch videos and learn at their own pace.
QuickWire: Students' e-Book Use Has Flatlined Since 2008 - Wired Campus. Digital textbooks save UNH business students $70K. 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. The College Board estimates that students spend an average of $1,137 for textbooks and supplies each year. Indiana U. Helps Shape Economic Terms of eText Transition. This month, Indiana University made agreements with a software company and five publishers that influence the economic terms for the future of e-textbooks. Instead of having a book disappear after 120 to 180 days, students access their eTexts as long as they attend the university. Instead of paying 60 to 85 percent of the retail price of a physical textbook, they pay 35 percent or less through a technology fee.
Instead of having print restrictions, they print as many pages as they like on their own dime or request a print-on-demand textbook for a modest fee. And instead of using four or five different software platforms to read and annotate their eTexts, they use one. As course material shifts from print to digital, Indiana University advocates on behalf of students for lower prices, more choices and common software platforms. The motivation for signing digital content, software agreements With digital texts, we have the opportunity to solve these problems, he said.
Can Higher Education Be Fixed? The Innovative University. Is this the end of the line for college bookstores? | Commentary. 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. In return, partnering publishers will receive an eText fee from each student enrolled in a participating class. To receive their texts, students will not even have to do anything. While publishers will supply the content, Courseload, an Indianapolis-based company founded by former Apple employee Michael Levitan and Kelley School of Business Professor Alan R.
But this program will not just save students money. Indiana U Strikes Cost-Cutting Deal with E-Text Publishers. E-Textbooks | News Indiana U Strikes Cost-Cutting Deal with E-Text Publishers By Dian Schaffhauser09/13/11 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. Under the new terms, the publishers will provide students substantial cost savings, the ability to access digital or printed hard copies, and uninterrupted access to all of their e-texts while they're students at IU.
The contracts evolved from a formal request for purchase process that followed two years of e-text pilot-testing with students and faculty. Saylor Foundation Kicks Off Open Textbook Challenge. E-Textbooks | News Saylor Foundation Kicks Off Open Textbook Challenge By Tim Sohn09/12/11 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. Prior to acceptance, submitted textbooks will be presented to a team of peer reviewers, who will need to confirm the books meet the criteria for the organization has established.
Eligible textbooks will expand on the more-than 200 free online college-level courses available at Saylor.org. "According to the College Board, an average college student at a four-year public university spends over $1,000 in textbooks each year. About the Author. A classroom in your eBook? California-based company brings social media functions to ever-popular eBook format, especially on tablets By Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor Read more by Denny Carter Students on 50 campuses will use iPad-based Inkling eBooks this fall. Besides notes, highlights, and web links, an eBook company has introduced interactive and social media aspects to its tablet-based tomes, becoming the latest to blend textbooks with classroom-like chats. Inkling, a San Francisco-based company that grabbed attention in K-12 schools and colleges last year when it began converting textbooks into Apple iPad applications, announced this month that its newest iteration would include a study group feature that lets students and professors interact within the eBook.
Read more about eBooks in higher education…Chegg moves beyond textbook rentalseBook revolution upends a publishing course Review: 5 eBook readers for less than $175. New Report now Out: California Universities & Digital Content - eBookNewser. Research Center: Technology in Education. 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 EditorRead more by Denny Carter August 31st, 2011 Plotkin spoke to students gathered outside a UMD library.
College students are going without required textbooks, doing their best to eke through the semester without shelling out hundreds in their campus bookstores. With inexpensive alternatives sparse, a group of college activists—backed by the Obama administration—is railing against skyrocketing textbook prices … one campus at a time. Textbook Rebellion launched a website that collects petition signatures aiming to show the widespread support for course textbooks that cost $30 or less, including online books that can be converted to traditional texts through an inexpensive printing process.
Hal Plotkin, a senior policy adviser for the U.S. Pearson 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.
Plug and Play offers data from it, as well as from Pearson’s Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and FT Press, as well as developer support and pricing details. Diana Stepner, head of future technologies at Pearson, said the project ties in with the growing trend towards open-source development and collaboration. One of the key benefits of opening up its content through Plug & Play was the potential for Pearson to connect with new audiences, Stepner added. New Pew study on Higher Education and the Digital Revolution anticipates digital textbooks. 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. The increased presence of technology products and services in higher education stems from the simple fact that for colleges it is less costly, quicker and less risky to purchase proven solutions than it is to produce the technology in-house. This practice, in turn, allows the college to focus on those functions for which it is was originally designed and for which it is better suited. Nevertheless, there is a sense among many in higher education that the great promise of educational technology in higher education is stalled. The frustration of vendors is reflected in Michael Stanton’s recent rant (his term, not mine) on the HigherEdLive blog.
There are smaller events like these beginning to pop up, too. 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. And while the next online model remains unclear, Southern New Hampshire’s president, Paul J. LeBlanc, has sketched out one possible blueprint in a “thinking paper” that he wrote as a springboard for discussion.
The vision is that students could sign up for self-paced online programs with no conventional instructors. Many of those things are already happening in various ways. Return to Top. Canada: Copyright: Major Universities Will Not Renew Agreements With Copyright Clearinghouse « INFOdocket. So when does academic publishing get disrupted? Exclusive: What Electronic Textbook Provider Has The Biggest Library? [STUDY] Just about every electronic textbook company declares that it has the most books available for download. Coursesmart calls itself “the world’s largest digital course materials provider.” Sellers like Barnes & Noble and Amazon return absurdly high numbers for searches in their etextbooks sections that include novels and other general books used in classes.
Textbooks.com boasts the “biggest selection of used & new college textbooks.” And a Kno executive recently told that Kno has the biggest etextbook offering on the Internet. Up until this point, there’s really been no good way to objectively compare each company’s offerings. Campusbooks , a 12-year-old textbook price comparison site, recently gained this ability when it expanded its database of texts across seven different etextbook makers — thus receiving access to their catalogs. The site worked with partner booksellers to come up with a list of the 1,000 most popular textbooks for fall 2011 to use as its metric. CourseSmart: 82%
Digital textbooks: Big savings if you can find them. This guest post comes from Laura Heller at dealnews. One of the latest changes in college culture is the availability of digital textbooks, which was underscored when Amazon unveiled its new rental platform last month. The promise is that you can save up to 80% with the ephemeral versions of those oft-cumbersome and expensive paper volumes.
Since money talks for most shoppers, many parents may be susceptible to the desires of their technologically savvy student to forgo physical books and buy an eBook reader or tablet instead, to make use of this digital ingenuity. But are digital textbooks living up the money-saving hype? An Amazon company spokesperson said it has "tens of thousands of textbooks" available to rent and even more can be purchased as a full download for the Kindle.
Actual reading lists yield disappointing results We obtained three class lists and the required reading for each from three separate students. A potential reason for the slow growth Should a student go digital? iPad, I Saw, I Waited: The State of E-Textbooks | Gadget Lab. If you’re looking for a textbook example of technology obstruction by the media industry, look no further than e-textbooks. “About 90 percent of the time, the cheapest option is still to buy a used book and then resell that book,” says Jonathan Robinson, founder of FreeTextbooks.com, an online retailer of discount books. “That is really an obstacle for widespread adoption [of e-textbooks], because smarter consumers realize that and are not going to leap into the digital movement until the pricing evens out.” That’s sad news for students headed back to college this fall.
IPads, Kindles and even HP’s doomed TouchPad tablet are literally flying off the shelves, and many students wouldn’t be caught dead on campus without one. Meanwhile, e-textbook sales at the nation’s universities are stuck in single digits, with little hope of escape before 2013. What gives? Simply put, this generation of scholars is helpless without technology. Some impetus for change is coming from the top down. Chegg partnering with Ingram on digital textbook delivery. Amazon Student app lets students buy and resell textbooks, other items.
By Chris Meadows Smartphones can be used for plenty of things other than information retrieval. Case in point: Amazon has released a new iPhone app aimed at college students. A fine-tuned version of its previous iPhone shopping app, Amazon Student will not only allow students to shop for textbooks and other products Amazon carries, but also let them resell items they already have though Amazon’s Trade-In program. Students can use the iPhone’s camera to take pictures of the bar code of the items for a quick listing. Then they can print a shipping label, and Amazon will send them a gift card for the amount of the sale. Of course, this probably won’t work for e-books, but it still is bringing a lot of the benefits of electronic purchasing and selling to students’ pockets. Chegg Unleashes Digital Textbook Rentals, Aims To Be 'LinkedIn For College Students' 8 tech tools for college students. Rising Costs Force Students To Skimp On Textbooks.
Are eBooks Bad For Learning? - eBookNewser. Inkling Raises $17 Million in new Funding - eBookNewser. College Students Willing To Give Up Sex To Avoid Lugging Books - eBookNewser. Teaching with the iPad (and Angry Birds) Higher Ed E-Learning Growth To Continue at Modest Pace Through 2015. Findings. A college with no books and paper, only iPads. Higher ed cautiously embraces of the cloud. Copyright Clearance Center Offering Reuse Rights - eBookNewser.
Inside Higher Ed Articles. Press Release | College Students Want Their Textbooks the Old-Fashioned Way: In Print. Pearson social media survey 2011. New Survey Finds More than Ninety Percent of College Faculty Use Social Media in the Workplace | Pearson Education. UC Libraries academic ebook use survey available, 58% use ebooks. Is the iPad Ready To Replace the Printed Textbook? Www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com/educators/pearson-social-media-survey-2011-bw.pdf. Back to the Future: The Changing Paradigm for College Textbooks and Libraries. Britannica Launches Portal for Access to Hundreds of Reference E-book Titles : Page 1 of 1. Www.poudrelibraries.org/about/pdf/ereader-report-2011extended.pdf.
Digital Textbooks Slow to Catch On. Education Reform: If It Can’t Fit into a Tablet PC, Forget It. Is Higher Education Ready for "The Education Bubble"? New Textbook Paradigm - In Which I Get It :: The Education Business Blog. Would You Like A $49 Electronic College Textbook With Lifetime Updates? Apps make college easier to access.