Online with Tom Nixon

31 Days of TED: Bill Gates on Solving World Problems

July 2 2011 by tcnixon in News, Technology, Videos |No Comments

31 Days of TED: Mike Matas on Interactive Books

July 1 2011 by tcnixon in Books, Digital Books, Geeky Stuff, Technology, Videos |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

June 30 2011 by tcnixon in News, Online Schools, Technology, Videos |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

June 24 2011 by tcnixon in Digital Books, Technology |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).

Youtube Video from the Science Leadership Academy

The History of Online Learning

June 16 2011 by tcnixon in News, Online Schools, Technology |No Comments

Via: OnlineEducation.net

Anybody want to go phishing?

April 16 2011 by tcnixon in Geeky Stuff, News |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

April 7 2011 by tcnixon in Digital Books, News, Technology |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

April 1 2011 by tcnixon in News |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

Digital Public Library of America

February 21 2011 by tcnixon in Digital Books, News |No Comments

In October 2010, Robert Darnton, the historian and university librarian at Harvard, talked to Wired Campus about the possibility of building what was then being described as a National Digital Library. Since then, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, with money from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, has stepped into the role of coordinating plans for what’s now being designated a Digital Public Library of America.

The planning has a public component as well: The Berkman Center has set up a wiki to which anyone can contribute. “We very much hope that this wiki will be the embodiment of a consensus-based and peer-produced approach,” the center notes on the welcome page.

The wiki lays out major topics related to the proposed DPLA project: content and scope (which includes a handy roundup of digitizing projects in the United States and abroad), governance and business models, legal and technical issues. It’s early days, but to get a sense of how the conversation’s shaping up, check out the most active pages on the wiki. (It’s also instructive to poke around the least-revised pages so far.)

For the rest of the article, click here.

New website: Best Online Private Schools

January 5 2011 by tcnixon in Geeky Stuff, News, Online Schools |1 Comment

I direct your attention to my brand-new website affectionately known as Best Online Private Schools. I hope that you will consider taking a look at it and let me know what you think.

And, yes, this is one of the secrets of which I have been speaking.

And, yes, there is more to come.