2tor Raises $32.5 Million Series C To Make Online Education Great “One reason online education isn’t that good is I don’t think it is trying to be that good,” says John Katzman, the CEO of 2tor, an online education startup that is trying to break that mold. The company, headquartered in New York City’s Chelsea Piers, just raised a $32.5 million series C financing, led by Bessemer Venture Partners. All of its existing investors—Highland Capital, Redpoint, Novak Biddle, City Light—re-upped. Since it was founded in 2008, 2Tor has raised a total of $65 million. Instead of focussing on low-hanging fruit like test prep or actual tutoring, 2tor is going straight after the higher education market, partnering with graduate programs to provide the technology platform to extend their classes online. (Not that there is anything wrong with test prep—Katzman previously founded the Princeton Review). Expanding its student population nearly twentyfold with 2tor has not hurt USC’s teaching program in the slightest.
For Educators | Symtext Symtext has built a more effective and efficient platform for schools, educators, and publishers to manage and deliver digital instructional materials to students. Institutions using the Liquid Textbook platform can help Educators create their own Liquid Textbook for each course by blending “chunks” of digital content from a variety of publishers and other sources – including chapters from textbooks, cases, articles, videos, photos, podcasts, and presentations. These resources can be combined with your own materials, and even include student generated content. Symtext’s platform For more information, or to arrange a demonstration, please contact us.
VideoLectures - exchange ideas & share knowledge Inkling Sofia Project 6 Companies Aiming to Digitize the Textbook Industry The world's readers purchased an estimated $966 million of ebooks in 2010, and Amazon has been selling more ebooks than paper books since January. But students have yet to catch on to the digital book revolution with the same fervor. A 2010 study by OnCampus Research found that 74% of college students surveyed still prefer to use a printed textbook. Where some see non-adopters, others see untapped markets, and thus large and small players alike have long been targeting the digital textbook niche. 1. CourseSmart was launched in 2007 as a joint venture with five publishers, including McGraw-Hill and Pearson. The CourseSmart approach is pretty standard (as the products of huge companies tend to be). 2. Follett-owned CafeScribe sells books with built-in study networks. Students can join groups to automatically pool their notes and make studying collaborative (professors can also create groups for their classes). 3. VitalSource is a combination between CourseSmart and CafeScribe. 5. 6.
AcademicPub Opens Custom Textbook-Building to Faculty E-Textbooks | News AcademicPub Opens Custom Textbook-Building to Faculty By Dian Schaffhauser04/26/11 A company with technology for creating digital-to-print books is getting into the textbook market. Permission to use copyrighted information from outside the library is provided by the Copyright Clearance Center. The basic process for creating a new book is fairly simple: After logging into the site, the user specifies a title, compiles and adds material section by section, selects a basic cover, specifies photos for the covers, writes an introduction, reviews the book in low-resolution format, and then finalizes it for print in digital or hardcopy form. AcademicPub offers a searchable library that includes content from multiple publishers, including EBSCO, Foreign Affairs, and the American Institute of Physics.
About Exploratree & Enquiring Minds About Exploratree Exploratree is a free web resource where you can access a library of ready-made interactive thinking guides, print them, edit them or make your own. You can share them and work on them in groups too. The Exploratree web resource has been developed by Futurelab and emerged out of our work on the Enquiring Minds project. With Exploratree you can: Use our ready-made thinking guides Make a new thinking guide from scratch Use it to set class projects Print them out (they can go as big as A0) Change and customise thinking guides, you can add or change text, shapes, images etc. The Exploratree idea came from observing the process of classroom enquiry. Enquiring Minds is a three-year research and development programme which aims to enable students to take more responsibility for the content, processes, and outcomes of their learning. Enquiring Minds Enquiring Minds is a three-year research and development programme which is run by Futurelab and funded by Microsoft.
Kings and Queens Come to Life: Retelling History Through Apps How do you visualize your thoughts? Are your dreams more like a sit-com or a documentary? English historian David Starkey thinks his thoughts and work are best represented through mobile applications after seeing his book, Crown and Country, turned into a rich media app. The goal of Starkey's app -- Kings and Queens -- is to bring his book, and history, to life. If you are familiar with the history of the British monarchy, it is one of the most fascinating tales of intrigue, betrayal, politics and power in the history of the world. "It's a case of the technology catching up with what I wanted to do," Starkey said in an interview with The Guardian's Apps blog. Starkey told The Guardian that the app, created by Trade Mobile, "reflects the creative processes of a writer." "All those things you've had to level out to make the line of narrative ... you can put back in," Starkey told the Guardian. Kings and Queens is interactive history at its best.
Online Learning Solutions for Health Science | Business | IT — AES Education AASL Announces 2011 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning « INFOdocket From ALA: At the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2011 Annual Conference in New Orleans, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced the 2011 Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning. In its third year, the list of websites honors the top 25 Internet sites for enhancing learning and curriculum development for school librarians and their teacher collaborators. Here’s the 2011 List (Annotations by AASL) Media Sharing Tagxedo Dazzle your project with these word clouds. Kerpoof Explore, create, and design at Kerpoof. Aviary Create logos, web templates, screen captures, edit your photos and more at Aviary. Nota Connect, collaborate, and co-create in real time! Digital Storytelling PicLits If a picture is worth a thousand words, then let this site provide the picture to inspire your words. Zooburst Add a new dimension to storytelling, reports, and presentations with ZooBurst’s digital 3-D tool. Myths and Legends A site for those who enjoy stories and storytelling. Spicy Nodes
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