I've seen a lot of articles lately about the high cost of textbooks. This one was about site licenses and how they penalize smaller schools. This one is about the use of e-readers in developing countries. This one is an infographic that looks at the issue from a variety of angles. It strikes me as a somewhat American obsession, this textbook habit. When I did my teacher training in New Zealand back in 2005, nobody used textbooks there. There were some resource packets produced by the government for certain curriculum areas, but other than that, you were on your own—it was your job,...

By Dr. Frank Lowney Editor's note: Those of you who read TeleRead regularly are probably well aware of the fact that Dr. Frank Lowney has been a staple in our comments section for quite some time now. Because of those comments, it was quite clear to me, long before I actually knew anything about Dr. Lowney or his work, that he was something of an expert in the academic publishing space. I emailed Dr. Lowney out of blue one day back back in September, asking if he'd be interested in contributing a post to TeleRead about the current state of the textbook market. In his reply, he told me...

Goodnight Moon is a hugely popular children's picture-book by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd Clarke Moore; it was recently made 'interactive' for the iPad. I've recently been having some weekly iPad time with our youngest kindergarten class, and thought they would be the perfect guinea pigs for this intriguing app. So ... how did it go? The 'Interactive' Features The interactivity was about what I expected. You can have the app read you each page, and then the kids can press on individual words to hear them again, or tap on a magnifying glass, which they can use to zoom in on...

By Caroline Ross It may be called Whispercast, but the shiny new organizational tool from Amazon may just have the potential to make school districts and teachers shout from the rooftops with joy. Okay, that last statement was a bit of hyperbole. But if Amazon's Whispercast has managed to solve the issues some school board members have with the iPad, then the Kindle (not the iPad) may end up dominating U.S. classrooms. In a nutshell, Whispercast is a free, Kindle-compatible system that was designed specifically with instructors and business professionals in mind. The concept is rather simple: it allows a central user (an employer...

Not wanting to be outdone by South Korea and others, which mandated the use of digital textbooks by 2015, earlier this year the FCC and the Department of Education released the Digital Textbook Playbook to help accelerate digital textbook adoption among American schools. According to a recent report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), it’s not a matter of if this transition will happen, but when. Since its launch in 2009, Inkling has been on a mission to reinvent publishing for the mobile, digital era by building engaging, interactive learning content from the ground up for the iPad. Initially focused on higher education, this year Inkling has been...

Here's an interesting article quoting a publishing exec who thinks technology will make us rethink age grouping in schools and organize them instead by competency. The executive, Jeff Livingston, points to online platforms like Khan Academy and Coursera as examples of technological innovation that allow students to progress and learn at their own pace. From the article: "In a virtual roundtable with reporters, he said, 'What does it mean to be a 9th grader or 10th grader beyond being a certain age? … It doesn’t make sense that all the 15-year-olds are in this grade and all the 16-year-olds are in that...

Mac Observer's John Martellaro has a great interview with tech expert Christopher Dawson on the status of iPads and tablets. In short: A giant mess. Dawson outlines a number of food-for-thoughts for those interested in technology integration for education. I will briefly recap them below, and add my own thoughts... 1. School Use Does Not Mean Student Use Dawson cites Tim Cook's remark that he is doing 'very well' selling discounted iPads to schools. That may be true—but the extent matters. Most schools are not buying one per kid. My own school, for instance, has almost 80 kids and we have nine iPads....

Back in mid-June, we posted a press release that introduced you to BookBoon.com, a London-based online publisher that offers free open-access textbooks for students. We heard from BookBoon again this morning; apparently the company recently asked roughly 10,000 students about their preferences between digital textbooks and printed textbooks. According to BookBoon, 2,164 respondents were students based in the U.S. Even more interesting: BookBoon transformed the survey's results into a few different blog-friendly infographics; the results of the U.S.-based students responses are illustrated in the graphic below. Directly beneath that is a second infographic that displays the results of the UK-based students who responded...

Whether you're the parent of a child with a reading disability or an educator who works with learning disabled students on a daily basis, you're undoubtedly always looking for new tools to help these bright young kids meet their potential and work through their disability. While there are numerous technologies out there that can help, perhaps one of the richest is the iPad, which offers dozens of applications designed to meet the needs of learning disabled kids and beginning readers alike. Here, we highlight just a few of the amazing apps out there that can help students with a reading disability...

We're officially one week into the new school year, and when I compare this—my seventh back-to-school experience as a teacher—with my first year in this job, I'm startled by how much has changed. I remember working with a male teacher who was considered cutting-edge because he kept student records on a Palm Pilot. Now I work in a school that has $5,000 Smart Boards in every classroom! And the kids have changed too. For example ... 1) They're more well-rounded than they used to be. During my first few years, I could count on the kindergarten kids to be pretty much a blank...

From The Textbook Guru comes this interesting op-ed on the price of textbooks. We've all heard about how Amazon, the secondhand market, textbook rentals and so on are taking a bite of Big Pub, but what this article points out is that the average price per title is falling across all markets, not just the 'new textbooks from Big Pub' one. And not only that, but sales are holding steady, not increasing, as prices fall. So, why hasn't the Brave New Marketplace opened up the market? The article suggests that the real fulcrum in the market is rental services. Their prices...

Scholastic wants to start your school year off right with iPad giveaways on Facebook and free e-books from Storia, the new teacher-recommended e-book and e-reading system designed specifically for toddlers to teens. By downloading the free Storia app to your PC, iPad or Android tablet, you'll automatically receive five free e-books, including a special-edition Clifford the Big Red Dog e-book in honor of his 50th birthday this year. Teachers who download Storia for their classroom will receive an additional five free e-books specifically selected for their student's grade level. You can also enter Storia's “Scratch and Win Sweepstakes” on Facebook for a...