Archive for the ‘digital textbooks’ tag
Kno tablets get price tags no comments
Kno has released the prices on its 14-inch tablets and, like the tablets themselves, the price tags are sizeable. Kno claims that if you do the math, the average student can pay for the Kno and save another $1300 by using it to study digital textbooks rather than using printed textbooks.
There are currently four configurations listed:
- Single screen 16GB — $599
- Single screen 32GB — $699
- Dual screen 16GB — $899
- Dual screen 32GB — $999
Actually, the prices are not that much different than the iPad, if you consider the size of the screen. Of course the Kno doesn’t have the Apple App Store behind it; instead it is relying on the developer community to come forward and make apps for it. How successful that will be no doubt depends on how many of the tablets are sold. The Kno is designed primarily for students to study digital textbooks on, and it does appear to come with a nice suite of study tools.
Some of the specs:
- Single or dual 14.1-inch LED multitouch display.
- Weight: Single screen 2.6 lbs; dual screen 5.6 lbs.
- Size: Single screen 13.8 x 9.1 x .55 inches; dual screen 13.8 x 18.3 x 1.14 inches.
- Nvidia Tegra T200 CPU; CPU speed up to 1GHz.
- 512 MB internal memory.
- Micro USB; microphone with noise cancellation (feature to be added with a future software update); 3.5mm stereo headphone jack.
- Battery life up to six hours.
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
- Accelerometer and ambient light sensor.
- Flash support.
- Audio and video playback supporting common formats will be added with a software update after the tablet’s release.
Kno expects to start shipping on Dec 20, 2010.
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McGraw-Hill Launches Custom Publishing Platform for Educators no comments
McGraw-Hill has announced the launch of a custom publishing platform for higher education teachers. The new program, named Create, enables professors to design custom classroom content from a library of almost 50,000 sources and receive ebooks within hours.
From the press release:
McGraw-Hill Education has brought custom publishing into the 21st century with McGraw-Hill Create (www.mcgrawhillcreate.com), an innovative platform that gives instructors unprecedented control over and customization of higher education classroom content. Gone are the days when professors had no choice in how to assemble content for classroom instruction, or had to wait weeks to receive a customized text. With Create, instructors can produce their own e-books or printed texts by selecting content from a vast library of resources – and receive a digital proof in under an hour.
Increasingly, instructors are demanding content solutions that are tailored to the way they teach. Custom publishing is one of the fastest growing areas in the higher education market, rising by 25 percent on a yearly basis. But not all custom content is created equal: results of a recent McGraw-Hill survey show that instructors are looking for low-cost solutions that offer the ability to integrate content from multiple disciplines, allow them to seamlessly incorporate their own material, contain enhanced search functions and promise faster delivery times. It is with these needs in mind that McGraw-Hill developed Create.
At Create’s core is a Google-like search engine functionality that enables professors to immediately pull from a wide range of quality content, including 4,000 McGraw-Hill textbooks, 5,500 articles, 11,000 literature, philosophy and humanities readings, and 25,000 business case studies from prominent providers such as the Harvard Business School. This powerful search tool allows professors to view content across the library, or limit their search by category, such as discipline or copyright year. Through a recently announced partnership with Blackboard Inc., teachers will have access to the full suite of McGraw-Hill Create content through their Blackboard account, seamlessly integrating Create with their established and familiar classroom tools. Professors can also easily upload and incorporate self-produced content into their Create project.
Once a Create text has been fully customized, the instructor receives a digital review copy in under an hour or a print review copy in three to five days. This represents a marked improvement over existing platforms, which often take up to three weeks to deliver review copies. Once a professor finalizes the book in Create, he or she can make it available for student purchase. Students may purchase Create e-books through the McGraw-Hill ebookstore or purchase Create print books through their campus bookstore.
To simplify and streamline the custom publishing process, an index and table of contents is automatically generated for each Create project. Create allows professors to easily save and archive projects to work on at another time or edit for future semesters. Professors can customize the look and feel of their Create project by selecting a cover design and adding their name and course information. Additionally, instructors can share Create projects with colleagues for review, making content customization a collaborative experience.
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Kno to Launch Single Screen Tablet no comments
It’s raining tablets! Today at the 
TechCrunch Disrupt Conference, Kno announced that it would be introducing a single screen textbook tablet as well as the dual screen tablet already planned.
Kno plans to ship both the single and dual screen tablets by the end of the year. Presumably the single display model will also have the large 14-inch screen.
Pricing has not been disclosed yet for either Kno tablet, although the dual screened model is expected to be under $1000. How much under we don’t know yet.
Cost is no doubt why Kno is taking this step. Kno CEO and co-founder Osman Rashid said that, ‘’Even though the Kno pays for itself in 13 months, the smaller up front investment of the single screen version will allow more students to use our learning platform.”
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Follett Patents Annotation Sharing Feature no comments
Fourteen40, Inc., a subsidiary of Follett Higher Education Group, has received a patent for certain features of its BestNotes. This is the annotation sharing feature used by Follett’s CafeScribe digital textbook platform.
The patent (number 7,779,347 B2) covers the CafeScribe platform’s methods of indicating frequently annotated portions of an e-textbook and displaying frequently used words in annotations. These features make it easy for readers to locate the notes most useful to them among the notes of classmates, professors and any readers of the book who choose to share notes. Users subscribe to other readers with a single click, just like you’d add a friend on Facebook or follow someone on Twitter. Other innovative proprietary note-search features of the BestNotes functionality are patent pending.
I’m not an attorney, but this patent looks pretty comprehensive to me and according to the press release quoted above more are pending. Not sure how this will affect other platforms that want to share annotations; is there any wiggle room left around this? Will this have any impact on the shared popular highlights feature that Amazon recently added to the Kindle?
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Take an eTextbook for a Test Drive no comments
Follett Higher Education Group announced today that it is extending its popular Try Now, Buy Later program through the fall 2010 semester. The program lets students and professors download and use eligible etextbooks for seven days before deciding whether or not to buy the title. Currently more than 10,000 titles at Follett’s CafeScribe online digital textbook shop are eligible for the Try Now, Buy Later program.
All notes and annotations made in an etextbook during the trial period will remain intact if the title is purchased.
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Inkling Digital Textbook App no comments
Inkling has launched its iPad textbook reading app.
Inkling offers interactive textbooks with social collaboration and integrated multimedia. Students are able to buy individual chapters or entire books for less than the price of the print textbook.
"Inkling uses multitouch interactivity to create engaging learning experiences," said Matt MacInnis, Founder and CEO of Inkling. "Rather than replicating a book on a screen, Inkling puts 3-D objects, video, quizzes, and even social interaction right at a student’s fingertips inside the textbook."
Students using the Inkling app can share their notes and highlights with each other and see comments from other students and professors alongside their own notes.
Inkling is a free download from iTunes.
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CourseSmart Launches New iPad App; iPad Contest no comments
CourseSmart has launched eTextbooks for the iPad 2.0, “an optimized application that takes full advantage of the iPad’s advanced functionality, provides students with the ultimate mobile solution to access all of the most popular, in-demand textbooks and course materials, anytime-anywhere.”
CourseSmart has also improved its website to help students find and access their assigned course material in less time. CourseSmart.com is also better integrating with students’ social media environment, introducing Facebook Connect as part of the new site and launching a new social media program to ensure students find the best options for purchasing their assigned course materials.
To promote all of the above, the digital textbook seller has announced “CourseSmart’s iPad-a-Day Giveaway,” a new contest which will award an iPad to one lucky winner each day. This contest will run from August 17th to August 30th and is open to students in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico.
You can find all of the details at CourseSmart.com.
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CourseSmart Partners with AccessText and Alternative Media Access Center to Make Digital Textbooks More Accessible no comments
CourseSmart,which makes claim to being the world’s largest digital course materials provider, announced today that it has formed a partnership with AccessText Network (ATN) and Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC) to improve the accessibility of its digital textbooks.
ATN is a national organization that facilitates and supports the delivery of alternative electronic textbooks to the Disabled Student Services offices of colleges and universities throughout the US. AMAC is an initiative of the Georgia University System and works to improve services for students with print-related disabilities in the US.
CourseSmart will work with ATN and AMAC to optimize the digital versions of approximately 80 percent of its most popular etextbooks to increase their functionality with accessible technologies.
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Searching for the Best Textbook Prices no comments
CampusBooks has a widget that you can use to search for the lowest prices on your textbooks. The widget searches almost 40 textbook sellers and returns results for both pbooks and ebooks (you can choose which you are interested in) as well as rentals and used copies. CampusBooks has let me post their widget on the site – you will find it on the eBook Sources page in the textbook section.
eBay announced today the release of an iPhone app that students can use to find textbooks on Half.com, which is owned by eBay. The app lets you scan an item’s barcode and then find it on Half.com. This works not only for textbooks, but for any other items that someone might be selling at Half.com. eBay says that there are over 80 million active listings from more than 700,000 sellers on Half.com, but adds that the majority of items are textbooks – especially in the back-to-school season. The app is available for free at the iTunes Store.
This is why eBay bought RedLaser a couple of months ago. RedLaser was a startup that had developed an iPhone app for scanning product barcodes. Probably an app to search for items up for auction on eBay itself will be forthcoming soon. The app could also be purposed to help eBay sellers list their items easier and faster as well.
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Barnes & Noble Adds Rentals to Its Textbook Offerings; NOOKstudy Sweepstakes no comments
Barnes & Noble announced today that in addition to offering higher education students digital textbooks and new and used paper texts, it will also begin renting textbooks. The new textbook rental service will be available through the Barnes & Noble Website.
B&N’s previously announced NOOKstudy program is also available from today. To celebrate B&N is having a sweepstakes – the Barnes & Noble College Giveaway Sweepstakes – which will give a $5,000 cash prize to one winner. Students who download NOOKstudy through October 29, 2010 will be automatically entered in the contest. See the NOOKstudy page for more details and non-purchase route of entry.
