At the Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday, McGraw-Hill Education unveiled its SmartBook, an adaptive e-book that tailors the reading experience to each students’ pace and mastery level. It guides students through the material, frequently assessing their retention, and highlights content on which they should focus. Read more »
As Pearson – along with the entire textbook publishing industry – rethinks its role in education, one of the company’s executives says it could look to build the core competencies of digital content creators like video game giant Electronic Arts. Read more »
Publishing giant McGraw-Hill has announced that it will sell its education division to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $2.5 billion. The news comes months after the publishing company said it would split its education and financial services units. Read more »
In the past year, leading technology companies have made big strides in bringing tablet computers into classrooms across the country. But while the availability of new devices is certainly critical, the successful transition to digital textbooks relies on many interconnected factors. Read more »
Amazon is now renting print textbooks in addition to Kindle textbooks. In doing so, the company seeks to compete with Barnes & Noble as well as with startups like Chegg and BookRenter. Read more at paidContent »
In a move aimed primarily at users of its textbooks, iPad publisher Inkling is making all of its titles available for the iPhone. The company’s interactive ebook publishing platform, Habitat, now works for iPhone as well. Read more at paidContent »
German startup PaperC adds a twist to the idea of academic textbooks by letting people purchase a single chapter — or even just a page. Now, in order to raise funding it’s not going a traditional route: it’s holding a public auction. Read more »
The traditional textbook publishing model, based on dead trees and middlemen, can force students to shell out hundreds of dollars for a stack of photocopies. Now, two law professors are offering an alternative at a fraction of the price. Read more at paidContent »
Rafter, a course materials management platform that grew out of textbook rental site Bookrenter earlier this year, today announced that it had acquired four-month-old startup HubEdu. Read more »
iPad textbook publisher Inkling is partnering with college bookstore provider Follett. Starting this fall, Follett will sell hundreds of Inkling titles in its over 900 college bookstores — including Stanford and UC Berkeley — and on its website. Read more at paidContent »
Higher education costs have skyrocketed by over 430 percent since the 1980s. Now two startups aim to make college courses more affordable. Coursera offers free online courses from universities like Stanford and Princeton. And a new tool from Akademos helps professors find less expensive — or free — textbooks for their courses. Read more at paidContent »
The majority of U.S. college students now prefer digital formats whether they’re reading textbooks or “fun” books, according to a new survey… Read more at paidContent »
Tablets represent the next evolution in the advancement of mobile computing, and by 2015 or 2016, the tablet will begin to replace the laptop and the desktop operating systems market will begin to level off or perhaps decline. Our latest forecast examines these trends in detail. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The battle for the college digital textbook market — including startups like Inkling and Kno — gets a fair amount of attention. But the K-… Read more at paidContent »
Chegg, a Santa Clara, Calif.–based startup that made its name in textbook rentals, has made its first piece of software that it says will aid the transition to digital learning for students by offering e-textbooks that act an awful lot like physical textbooks. Read more »
Apple is holding an event in New York next week, in which the company is planning to make “an education announcement.” Many are connecting the event with comments Steve Jobs made to his biographer and expecting Apple to announce a digital textbook initiative through the iBookstore. Read more »
Apple will be holding a press event in New York City this month, according to invitations sent Wednesday. The invitation has few details, but says the topic will be “an education announcement.” The event will take place at the Guggenheim Museum. Read more »
This week Inkling debuted the 2.0 version of its software, which makes interactive and digital versions of college textbooks for the iPad. So GigaOM headed over to Inkling’s San Francisco headquarters to get an in-person demo from founder and CEO Matt MacInnis. Read more »
It’s no secret that most college students aren’t crazy about textbooks. But will moving required reading materials to an e-book format really change all that? Recent market research indicates that it just might — and that college students are demanding to go digital more than ever before. Read more »
Apple has started making the iPad available on its online education store in packs of 10 with an appallingly–stingy discount of only $20 per iPad. If Apple wants to start a computing revolution with the iPad, it absolutely must get the device into schools. But in […] Read more »
The cat is only just out of the bag, and still there are iPad-related websites, accessories, and apps being promoted across the web. Some were clearly just waiting to create something for whatever Apple released, and some appear to have been potentially been in on the […] Read more »
