Inkling Raises $17M for Digital Textbooks - Liz Gannes - Media Inkling, the San Francisco-based maker of interactive iPad textbooks (see D9 demo video here), has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by Tenaya Capital and including Jafco Ventures, Pearson Education and Sequoia Capital. Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis, citing IBISWorld data, noted in a recent interview that the U.S. textbook market was worth $16 billion in 2010 — versus $15 billion for “trade books” (fiction, literary non-fiction, everything else). That’s depicted in the chart below. Inkling has 60 employees and hundreds of offshore workers who help format books, which MacInnis said he expects to increase to thousands next year. Today, Inkling’s best sellers are medical textbooks. MacInnis said Inkling will also soon expand beyond textbooks, though he’s keeping the details under wraps for now. Tagged with: D9, funding, IBISWorld, Inkling, iPad, JAFCO Ventures, Matt MacInnis, Pearson Education, Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital, textbooks
Visual Poet – iPhone and iPad Review at Appotography Visual Poet was originally released as an exclusive iPad app, but recently it has been released also on the iPhone/iPod Touch. As the name suggests, this is an app aimed at achieving creative results that combine two different but adjacent typologies of media: words and images. More in general, it could be a nice little tool for graphic artists who are interested in making use of their Apple devices to create something that goes a little beyond basic photography or simple writing. Alas, the app has some problem that might prevent users from truly enjoying it. Main Features 940 x 320 pixels resolution;Single three-paneled layout;Share via email or Tumblr;Use photos from Flickr, Tumblr, Google or photo library. Appotography Opinion I have to admit, I like a lot the idea behind this app. Visual Poet is not strictly a photography app, however it has a lot to do with photos and their employment. Apart from these considerations, how does the app actually work? Overall
edWeb: A professional online community for educators How Online Education Is Changing the Way We Learn [INFOGRAPHIC] Over the past decade or so, the Internet has become a huge source of information and education, especially for those who might be short on time, money or other resources. And it's not just crowdsourced data collections like Wikipedia or single-topic blogs that encourage individual learning; huge corporations and nonprofits are making online education and virtual classrooms a very formal affair these days. From the first online classes (which were conducted by the University of Phoenix in 1989) to the present day, when online education is a $34 billion industry, more and more students are finding new life and career education opportunities online. Check out this infographic from OnlineEducation.net about how the world of online learning has changed and grown over the years. Click image to see larger version. [source: Online Education] Top image based on a photograph from iStockphoto user flyingdouglas.
Diigo App - Bookmarking Organisation and Collection - AppAppeal edWeb.net Emerging Tech Emerging Tech is a professional learning community (PLC) where school librarians can explore all the ways to integrate technology and 21st century learning into school library programs. The community hosts free monthly webinars and live chats presented by Michelle Luhtala, Head Librarian at New Canaan High School (CT). Online discussions provide an easy way to continue the conversation and share ideas and experiences with peers across the country, and around the world. You'll have an opportunity to collaborate with other librarians as you learn about and explore the many uses of technology in school libraries. Upcoming Webinars Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - 5PM Eastern Time Tuesday, July 15th - 11AM Eastern Time Wednesday, August 13th – 5PM Eastern Time with Elisabeth LeBris, Director of Library Technology Services at Kenilworth Public Schools in Illinois Wednesday, September 17th – 5PM Eastern Time Pre-registration is not required for Emerging Tech community members. About Follett’s K-12 Business
Connexions - Sharing Knowledge and Building Communities Apps That Rise to the Top: Tested and Approved By Teachers Michelle Luhtala/Edshelf With the thousands of educational apps vying for the attention of busy teachers, it can be hard to sift for the gold. Michelle Luhtala, a savvy librarian from New Canaan High School in Connecticut has crowd-sourced the best, most extensive list of apps voted on by educators around the country. “I wanted to make sure we had some flexibility because there’s no one app that’s better than all the others,” Luhtala said. 30Hands allows a user to make pictures, annotate them, record a voice explainer and then packages it all into a video. Adobe Voice is a recently released education product from Adobe that allows students to narrate a story over an array of digital images. Book Creator is only available for iPads, allowing kids to easily create their own iBook by importing images, multimedia, text, and audio. Tellagami is a tool to share quick animated messages. ExplainEverything is another tool for creating video like tutorials. Symphonizer is great for music classes.
Push Pop Press — About Us Last year Push Pop Press set off to re-imagine the book. We created a new way of publishing and exploring text, images, audio, video and interactive graphics, then teamed up with Melcher Media and Al Gore to create a new kind of book. The result is Al Gore's Our Choice, which was released earlier this year. “this is one of the most elegant, fluid, impressive apps you've ever seen.
OER: The Myth of Commercial Textbook Reliability | College Open Textbooks Blog An “OER” is an open education resource and the most common example is an open textbook. An open textbook is a book, most often electronic, that is licensed in a way that allows re-use, repurposing, editing, and republishing. One of the main advantages in an open textbook, apart from the fact that they are free, is that open textbooks can be edited by the instructor. According to the Educause article “7 Things You Should Know About Open Textbooks,” ”The traditional publishing model features robust editorial..mechanisms designed to ensure the quality…of printed textbooks.” I will let these examples suffice for now. How did we get here? But the solution can only come from open texts: an instructor or department cannot correct a commercial text, cannot add to it, or adapt the materials to the specific needs of the local student population. Lets do our job as educators and not rely on commercial businesses to teach our students. Besides all of that, a textbook is not a course.