Educational Publishing Viewed as “Big Business”

Apple’s announcement about iBooks 2 and the authoring tool have directed attention to the learning resources industry, but a recent article in WIRED says there is good reason that Apple would like to break into educational publishing. According to “Why Education Publishing Is Big Business,” the industry attracts companies like Apple because “the biggest publishers in the world today are education publishers.” The article cites the industry’s investment in the future of digital resources, global expansion, focus on information over medium of delivery, and market scope as significant characteristics.

Analysts Ponder the Impact of Apple’s iBooks 2

On January 19 Apple announced the release of iBooks 2, including textbooks for the iPad, and the free authoring tool IBook Author. While the learning resource industry sorts out the impact, here are some views from around the web.

• Development Costs: While Peter Kafka, who live blogged the announcement, appreciated the elegance of the sample textbooks presented and the possibilities for creating a new kind of e-book, he also issued cautions about the development price tag: “…someone needs to figure out how to pay for a system where you can build all this new cool digital stuff, while you continue to publish your old paper-and-ink products. After some initial experiments, most magazine guys have retreated to more or less republishing the existing product, with a few bells and whistles.” (“Apple Unveils iPad Textbook Plan,” All Things Considered)

What Is Innovation in Education?

Pop Quiz

Which one is an innovation in educational resources?

a.     A teacher guide that presents strategies on using Response to Intervention as a framework for supporting English language learners

b.    A pen that simultaneously records everything a person hears and writes, making it possible for students and teachers to easily revisit classroom instruction and meetings

c.    A panoramic camera that captures classroom lessons and publishes videos to an online management systems for users to collaboratively view, share, and comment on

d.    A curriculum program, aimed at special needs and at-risk youth, that develops everyday vocabulary students will need to know to be successful in the real world

New Draft of LRMI Specification Open for Comment

The Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) and Creative Commons are co-leading the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), a project to create a standard vocabulary for describing educational content. They have opened the final call for public comment on the latest specification of the framework. General comments should be posted on the LRMI discussion board; technical feedback is welcome on the LRMI mailing list at groups.google.com/group/lrmi. The public comment period ends January 31, 2012.

Create the Ed Pub Dream Team

Common Core Standards, Bring Your Own Device, the flipped classroom, decreased school funding—education is going through a period of extraordinary changes that affects all concerned. Now, though, is also a time of increased collaboration in the educational publishing market where companies are finding success working together. During planning for the 2012 CIC, committee members started thinking about what would happen if our industry had a board of directors—the best of the best—who would debate these topics and provide direction for our industry. Who would these people be? What roles would they play?