Here are some links to interesting articles from the past few days:
- The Xplanation blog has a posting about “Nine Important Trends in the Evolution of Digital Textbook and E-learning Content” that is worth a read. Some of the trends include the growth of OER, the development of a common format for e-textbooks, and a merging of the rental and e-textbook markets.
- An article from the Wall Street Journal reports that Blackberry could unveil a 7-inch tablet as early as next week. According to the report, the tablet will not be sold with a cellular service but users will be able to connect to cellular networks through Blackberry smartphones.
- According to a recent press release, Vook has released 47 enhanced e-books or “vooks” in the Apple iBookstore. As mentioned previously, vooks blend text, video, images, and social networking into a single experience. Here is a video demo that explains more.
- Here is an interesting article about a school in Scotland that gave each of its students an iPad for use in class and at home.
- According to Publishers Weekly, the Community College Open Textbook Collaborative (CCOTC) has partnered with Dynamic Books, an interactive digital textbook platform from Macmillan. CCOTC is a nonprofit coalition of colleges, governmental agencies, educational nonprofits, and other education-related organizations that was formed to help reduce the cost of textbooks. CCOTC has identified 27 open textbooks that will be made available through Dynamic Books beginning in January 2011.
- A posting on the Kindle Nation Daily blog says that Amazon is winning the e-book pricing war against publishers. The number of e-books in the Kindle store that are in Amazon’s preferred price range has increased significantly over the past few months. The posting includes a pricing analysis as well.
