Saturday, February 26, 2011

Interactive Books from Kiwa

The conversation continues..

Kiwa has a collection of interactive "Qbooks" available for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. These interactive books have features such as "Swipe to Read," "Touch to Hear," "Touch to Spell" and a "My Narration" function to read and record in your own voice. Some have narration built-in. You will find the ability to "paint" story pages with custom brushes, as well. The books are moderately priced (.99 cents for the iPod Touch versions up to $7.99 for the iPad HD versions). Many titles are also multi-lingual, which might be suitable for foreign language teaching. The Kiwa website reports that "support for other platforms coming soon."

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

ICE 2011 Presentation: "ePub and the Future of the Book"

Today and tomorrow I will be presenting the work of the ADE team's Summer Institute project and ideas around the use of ePub, digital text and specifically the iPad for delivering instruction. Calling all educators!! Here is your chance to add your voice to the discussion. Visit the back-channel "chat board" at http://todaysmeet.com/futureofbooks/ and post your ideas about what books mean to you, and what you think is important when we look at what books of the future should be, do, or have. No sign-up is required.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Florida sets timeline for digital textbooks by 2015

Dateline: February 17, 2011 in the St. Petersburg Times:
State education officials rolled out a five-year proposal this week that calls for all students in K-12 to use only "electronic materials" delivered by Kindles, iPads and other similar technology by 2015.
Read the full article

Thursday, February 10, 2011

What is the Future of the Book? Discussion continues at Educon

Christine DiPaulo and Chris Penny lead a discussion during Educon 2.3 (Jan 28-31, 2011 http://educon23.org/) in Philadelphia titled Future Of The Book. (http://educon23.org/conversations/Future_Of_The_Book). It was an extension of the work started at the Apple Distinguished Educators Summer 2010 Institute. Bill Rankin was kind enough to allow them to repurpose some of his outstanding work. Dr. Penny reports, "The session was very well received."

Watch live streaming video from educon14 at livestream.com