Apps Education

Publishing in the Digital Era:
written by Greg Swanson at AppsinEducation on 1st May 2011

How will schools and more importantly teachers respond to the changing paradigm that is digital publishing. We have recently completed a survey at our school of all the textbook suppliers we use and only two textbooks were still unavailable in digital format. This means that as the roll-out of new devices occur these digital texts will all be preloaded on the mobile devices. This is one of the major incentives for schools to move towards 1-to-1 laptops or iPad programs. The ease by which students can access their textbooks on the mobile device is, not surprisingly, also a selling point for parents, as the cost of textbooks and the weight of schoolbags continue to increase.

The major textbook companies have also been active in developing textbooks beyond simple PDF copies of the paper based text. Inkling's iPad textbooks are a testament to this type of interactive text development and it is promising to see some of these same publishing companies buy into the digital start-ups who already have the technical know how and the existing technologies in place.

Inkling announced that it'll be receiving financial backing from two of the largest names in textbook publishing -- Pearson and McGraw-Hill. What sets Inkling apart from other companies testing the textbook waters is it's approach to creating truly interactive books that go beyond just making an electronic version of a book. Many e-textbook publishers simply make a PDF file of the content in an existing textbook and leave it at that.

Published at http://www.tuaw.com on the 3rd of last month

Coupled with this, is the ease with which individuals can now publish professional looking online articles, worksheets, e-zines and even textbooks. This means that the availability of these types of online publications allow for real and meaningful individualised learning. Teachers and or students can receive differentiated coursework, resources or reading materials that are specifically designed for both their chosen area of interest and their achievement level in the course content. Nobody is saying that this is a quick task but it is not impossible, and in fact it is not even that hard.

Here are some examples of publications and the tools you could use to do this today.

Digital Textbooks:

OnSwipe is a platform that makes it insanely easy for publishers of all sizes to make their content and advertising a beautiful experience on touch enabled devices via the browser.

http://onswipe.com/

Teacher produced Textbooks:

Created in Pages on the Mac or Illustrator on PC


E-zines:
Created in Pages on the Mac or Illustrator on PC


Blogs:
Use your blog as a class textbook or a place for your students to locate their next activity


Twitter Feeds and RSS Readers as Texts

Flipboard:
Retweet interesting sites or articles back to a class account that is added to their Flipboard mag



Paper.li:
Have your class subscribe to a twitter feed daily or weekly online newspaper


Website Reader:
Surfboard
Read a website in the format of a e-magazine