Education

Revenues Up for Children's, YA & Education Publishers; Overall Trade Declines
July 28, 2016 at 11:12 am

Washington, DC - Publishers’ revenues were up Feb. 2016, compared to Feb. 2015. Despite gains in Children's/YA Books and Religious Presses, a decline in Adult Books meant an overall decline for Trade books of 0.9% Feb. 2016 vs. Feb. 2015 and 8.2% year-to-date vs. 2015.  Also within trade, downloaded audio and print formats continued to…

Press Release: Ingram Introduces Ingram Academic Services
July 26, 2016 at 1:03 pm

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — July 26, 2016 — Ingram Content Group through Ingram Publisher Services announces the launch of Ingram Academic Services, a service customized for university presses and academic publishers. The first joint initiative following Ingram’s acquisition of Perseus’ distribution businesses, Ingram Academic Services offers distinguished resources, tools and services to help university presses and…

In OER-Driven World Education Publishers Must Focus on Instructional Design
July 18, 2016 at 9:02 am

In an earlier blog post I made the statement that in the age of open education resources (OER), curation, not content, will be king. My thesis was that the sheer abundance of available content -- some produced by for-profit publishers and some from other sources -- reduces its value. The real providers of value, I…

How Do We Know When Technology Helps—or Hurts—the Classroom? Educators at ISTE Weigh In
June 30, 2016 at 1:22 pm

“We dropped over $10,000 last year on a math product, but I’m not sure if it’s really helped our students learn.” Sound familiar? Over the past few years, “efficacy” has entered the edtech lexicon as a word commonly used to reference whether or not edtech is driving student learning. But as educators and edtech companies…

HMH & Pearson Dive into Virtual Reality Curriculum with Google Expeditions
June 30, 2016 at 12:02 pm

This week both Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Pearson announced partnerships with Google Expeditions, a program that allows teachers to take their students on virtual field trips using Google Cardboard. Since Google Expeditions launched in September 2015, over one million students from 11 different countries have taken virtual field trips. Now both HMH and Pearson are…

Press Release: HMH Unveils Curriculum-Based Virtual Reality Field Trips for Google Expeditions
June 29, 2016 at 11:07 am

BOSTON – June 27, 2016 – Global learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) today launched the first HMH Field Trips for Google Expeditions for students grades K-12. Announced at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference, HMH’s offering currently includes four field trips aligned to select HMH science and social studies curriculum, which…

Amazon Unveils Online Education Service for Teachers
June 28, 2016 at 1:45 pm

Just ahead of the back-to-school season, Amazon plans to make a major foray into the education technology market for primary and secondary schools, a territory that Apple, Google and Microsoft have heavily staked out. Monday morning, Amazon said that it would introduce an online marketplace with tens of thousands of free lesson plans, worksheets and…

Press Release: Book Sales Down at the Start of 2016, Ebooks Decline
June 27, 2016 at 2:32 pm

WASHINGTON, D.C. — June 27, 2016 —  Publishers’ revenues were down Jan. 2016, compared to Jan. 2015. Trade publishing had double-digit declines in Childrens/YA Books and Adult Books, while Religious Presses had modest gains. Notably, ebook sales had another steep decline with reporting publisher sales declining nearly 25%, compared to Jan. 2015. Big Picture Data:…

Russian Educational Publishers Petition Anti-Monopoly Service
June 24, 2016 at 1:41 pm

The Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) has been asked to consider a petition from leading publishers alarmed by what they believe is the unfair market share of Prosveshenye, a leading producer in Russian educational material. As written up by Eugene Vorotnikov at The Bookseller, the petition has followed “a recently-issued recommendation from the Moscow city government’s education department…

More Copyright Fallout: Canadian Textbook Publishing Called ‘Not Sustainable’
June 23, 2016 at 2:14 pm

Writing Copyright-free material edging out Canadian educational texts for CBC News, Nigel Hunt asks, “Are Canadian students being forced to learn from foreign textbooks?” John Degen, executive director of the Writer’s Union of Canada has expressed his concern on that topic: “I hear again and again,” he tells CBC News, “from professors and from teachers…