London – BETT claims to be the largest education technology convention in the world. From what I could see the scale of the show is about the same as ISTE (nee’ NECC) in the US, although the content is distinctly more international. There are some differences from US education trade…
Ed Note: One of my favorite thinkers and practitioners on engaging kids deeply with Math and Science is Jim Bower. Jim is that rare combination of theorist and practitioner who is successful in both realms. He is both a Professor of Neuroscience at UTSA and the Founder/CEO of Whyville.net, arguably…
Education publishers and Learning Management Systems have a long and somewhat checkered history. Open source publishing, XML, and content digitization are changing the LMS landscape rapidly. In today’s guest post Louise Dube outlines the issues facing companies creating instructional materials. By Louise Dube What to do? Educator Buying Trends, a…
Today’s walkabout focuses on a fundamental shift in the instructional materials industry away from the scale economics of the big textbook publishers to the value of niche focused expertise. I believe this is the future of our business. In a world where Home Depot crushes the local hardware store only…
50% of the men did not wear neck ties at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Traditional publishers are struggling with appropriate responses to digital transformation and aping the casual style of Silicon Valley seems to be popular. Interesting fact – if you wear a suit without a tie you still…
When textbooks go fully digital what will schools buy? Will they buy individual lessons, units of 2-3 weeks length, or full curriculum that span a year the way they do today? This is the $5 billion question facing our industry. Mike Shatzkin has an excellent post on this topic over…
E.D. Kain over at Balloon-Juice has a fascinating saunter through crime stats since video games became widely popular. According to the FBI, since 1990 violent crime has been on a steady decline. E.D.’s basic hypothesis is that some of this can be attributed to people experimenting with rage and mayhem…
In discussing the potential for ads in e-books – the latest hail mary pass of traditional media – Paul Carr at TechCrunch dropped this gem: It’s a compelling argument, but like so many compelling arguments made about the future of books, it’s also hampered by consisting almost entirely of bullshit.…
Scribd is working hard to be the text version of YouTube. Upload some text, tag it, and let the world discover it. It isn’t just unpublished novels – many copyrighted textbooks are already there via unauthorized uploads. Like YouTube, users can upload anything and the site isn’t under any legal…
Last week the New York Times published a piece titled $200 Textbook vs. Free. You Do the Math by Ashlee Vance. Today we take up the challenge posed in the title and demonstrate that Open Source Textbooks are twice as expensive as books in the K12 market. Let me state…