31 Days of TED: Mike Matas on Interactive Books
1 July 2011 | No Comments »I have decided to spend the next month finding and posting the best of TED. Well, the best of TED that relates to me and what I do. The first is Mike Matas discussing the first feature-length interactive book.
Five Points: Laurel Springs School
30 June 2011 | No Comments »So I have decided to create short videos to help promote the online schools on my websites. I’m good at some things, but not great at others. This is probably one of those that I could do better. That being said, here it is.
The changing world of digital textbooks
24 June 2011 | No Comments »I had an interesting conversation with representatives of a publishing company that has me thinking, again, about the future of digital textbooks. Certainly these folks got it, but so many just don’t.
See, here’s the deal. Publishing companies are going to have to change the way that they make money with regard to textbooks. Here is my list of non-starters for the publishing companies out there:
- $49 for a digital textbook? Really? I am someone who understands the publishing world reasonably well (written four books, former school librarian, voracious reader on the subject), so I do get that there is a significant cost involved. It’s not $49 each. It can’t be. Why? Here’s one good reason. I actually had a conversation with a different publishing company and they brought up the quality issue. Absolutely what they do is of higher quality than that link. If that was the only choice, perhaps that argument would win. The economy is swirling the drain. Free is free.
- Paying for digital textbooks over x number of years? Really? That is a model that never made sense (and which was tied to textbook adoptions). It’s unclear to me that California will do textbook adoptions in the same way again (adoptions last seven years here). We will pay one time and be done with it (and I would encourage you to go back and take a look at #1).
- You have to use publishing companies because you need textbooks. Guess what? You are no longer the only game in town. Groups of large school districts could easily band together and begin to create textbooks of their own.
- A digital textbook is not the creation of a .pdf file and the slapping of it onto the Internet. Again, I can get that for free. Digital textbooks should have video, audio, interactivity, and more. There are precious few examples of this out there.
I think the publishing companies are listening to the wrong people. I always give time when publishing companies want to come and talk with me. Two have done this so far. Does it make a difference? I hope so, but going quickly are the days when we “need” textbook publishers. Certainly they can do good work. That’s no longer enough.
You now need to convince me that we shouldn’t just scavenge the textbook funds and buy other things (like tablet devices and supplemental pay contracts for content creation).
Anybody want to go phishing?
16 April 2011 | No Comments »So this morning I get an email from the fine folks at HostGator letting me know that I have exploits in scripts installed on my websites. Lovely. They were nice enough to remove the malicious files, but I now need to go log-in to most of my websites and make some changes.
Did I mention that I have about sixty websites? It’s never dull.
The Digital Textbooks Daily
7 April 2011 | No Comments »If you have an interest in digital textbooks, and who doesn’t, then I would encourage you to check out the new Digital Textbooks Daily that I have set up over at http://paper.li. Using Twitter feeds, it pulls in information from all over the Internet about digital textbooks. Enjoy!
Using online diploma for military
1 April 2011 | No Comments »I received the following request in my email today. Please respond to the email address below.
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Dear iNACOL member:
I am writing to seek your assistance in identifying students from your online program that may be impacted by the U.S. Military’s policy of classifying students who graduate from full time online schools – even fully-accredited, public, online schools – with a “Tier 2” status. Tier 2 status is used for students with a GED or who have been home schooled.
Students with a Tier 2 classification may need to complete additional education beyond a high school diploma in order to enroll in the military or they are given a significantly lower priority than Tier 1 students. Through iNACOL’s Advocacy Committee, we have been working to have this policy changed and Rep. Joe Wilson from South Carolina has expressed interest in introducing legislation to change this policy.
The Associated Press is working on an article on this subject and we are hoping to be able to provide them with a list of students who have been impacted by this policy who are willing to talk to the press. If you know of any such students, if you could provide me with their names and contact information and let me know if we have permission to provide their names to the press, that would be very helpful. If you could also provide us with the gender of the student and if you happen to know if the student was able to enroll in the military despite this policy, that would be helpful to know as well.
As is often the case with the press, we have a short time frame to gather this information. We need all student names by Monday morning, April 4th. Thanks in advance for your assistance. Please respond to Wendy Fleming at wfleming@inacol.org at your earliest convenience.
Best regards,
Susan Patrick
iNACOL President and CEO