Five of Our Favorite Ed Tech Blogs

Those who follow us on Twitter (if you don't follow us yet... you should!) know that we regularly share exciting news from the wide world of "ed tech."

Well, we couldn't do it without the wonderful sources that populate our RSS feed and keep us informed of the newest and greatest technology in the education world to be carefully curated and passed on to you.

To give thanks we thought it would be nice to feature some of our favorite places to read about ed tech (in no particular order). Feel free to leave other suggestions in the comments!

Public Domain Image via OpenClipArt User ytknick

Project MUSE and AcademicPub Partner

Journals and Books Stored in Project MUSE Can Now Be Transferred

For Inclusion in the AcademicPub™ Content Library

Baltimore, MD and New York, NY, May 15, 2012 - Project MUSE, a leading provider of digital humanities and social science content for the scholarly community, and AcademicPub, a top provider of custom books - print and digital - for higher education, today announced a partnership that will provide greater choice and ease of use for college and university instructors who wish to provide high-quality, well-priced content to their students. 

The joint announcement was made by Terry Ehling, Associate Director, Project MUSE; and Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of AcademicPub parent SharedBook Inc. 

"This unique partnership will spur more use of Project MUSE, which will benefit instructors and ultimately the students they teach, said Ehling. "AcademicPub has quickly established itself as a major player in the creation and distribution of custom course materials, and we look forward to working with Caroline Vanderlip, Michael Cairns and their professional team to make our journal and book collections available at greater scale." 

"At a time of great disruption in the college textbook market, it's gratifying to be able to partner with Project MUSE, whose leadership saw the future nearly 20 years ago, and has been working to shape that future in concert with the world's top academic presses," said Vanderlip. "And now is a perfect time to partner, as we will have all of our joint operating processes well in place for the beginning of the 2012-2013 academic year." 

AcademicPub, launched in April 2011, enables instructors to create copyright-cleared, custom course materials from a variety of content sources, including their own files, the Web at large and the AcademicPub Content Library, which consists of nearly 3 million units of scholarly content from more than 130 publishers, representing 75 separate disciplines. 

"The output of a book created through AcademicPub is either a physical, perfect-bound, soft-cover book or an e-book that is fully DRM'ed," said Vanderlip. "No matter the format, the book can be purchased either directly from AcademicPub, or through the institution's bookstore." 

Project MUSE, launched in 1995, is the trusted source of complete, full-text versions of scholarly journals and books from university presses around the globe. 

"The practical aspect of this agreement is that instructors utilizing peer-reviewed material from Project MUSE will now be able to marry that content with highly vetted complementary products," said Ehling. "This means that the material selected for inclusion in a course will be of the highest possible quality." 

About Project MUSE

Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social science periodical and book content; since 1995, its electronic journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, special, and school libraries worldwide. MUSE is the sole source of complete, full-text versions of journal titles from many of the world's leading university presses and scholarly societies. Project MUSE is now home to 14,000 monographs and over 500 scholarly and literary journals from more than 200 publishers. 

About AcademicPub

AcademicPub, Sharedbook Inc's technology platform for higher education, assembles, composes, prices and delivers custom textbooks - in eBook and/or print format. AcademicPub allows for immediate creation and inclusion of copyright-cleared content from anywhere, such as web articles, self-generated lectures or from the AcademicPub Content Library. Digital or print distribution generates a fast and easy way for educators to provide an engaging educational experience, with lower prices and up-to-the-minute materials for students. More information and free registration for faculty is available at www.academicpub.com. Headquartered in New York since 2004, SharedBook Inc. is privately held and can be found at www.sharedbook.com. 

Contact for Project MUSE:

Terry Ehling

(410) 516-6966

tae@press.jhu.edu 

Contact for AcademicPub:

James A. Boyle 

Boyle Public Affairs

jim@boylepublicaffairs.com 

(571) 213-3979

We're Going to the 2012 Academy of Marketing Science Conference

2012 AMS Annual Conference
May 16th - 19th
NO Riverside Hilton, New Orleans, LA

Attending:
Rick Hunt
rhunt@sharedbook.com

For more information about the conference click here.

For more information about AcademicPub click here.

An Interview with Textbook Media Press

As part of an ongoing feature, we've sat down and asked some of our wonderful content partners a number of questions about their businesses, their partnership with us, and the future of the industry. This time we spoke with Textbook Media Press.

If you're interested in keeping up to date with more interviews like the one below, the state of course materials and ed tech in general, or AcademicPub in specific, be sure to follow us on your social network of choice whether that's Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn. Click below to read the interview.

We're at the Ed Tech Industry Summit!

SIAA Ed Tech Industry Summit
May 6th - 8th
Palace Hotel, San Francisco, CA

Attending:
Michael Cairns
mcairns@sharedbook.com

For more information about the conference click here.

For more information about AcademicPub click here.

We're Celebrating One Year, Looking Ahead

Higher Ed Unit of SharedBook Inc. Notes Six-Fold Increase in Publishing Partners and Schools' Embrace of CUSTOM COLLEGE PLUS, Expects Custom "Book-Building" to Spike Next Year

New York, NY, May 1, 2012 - One year after entering the higher ed market, AcademicPub™ moves confidently into its second year of operations with 130 publishing partners supplying 3 million-plus units of high-quality, copyright-cleared content, 20 schools embracing CUSTOM COLLEGE PLUS™, and more than 2,000 professors and other higher ed instructors as active users of its platform. The announcement was made by Caroline Vanderlip, CEO, SharedBook Inc., the parent company of AcademicPub. 

On the publishing partner front, AcademicPub has grown at a strong and consistent pace since its April 2011 launch, adding 109 new publishers to its original list of 21 partners for a total of 130. Recently signed publishers include Berkshire Publishing, CATO Institute, OECD, University of Akron Press, and Urban Institute Press. These new publishing partners join houses from around the world, with top university presses in the U.S. - such as Yale and University of Chicago - complemented by dozens of others, including Cambridge and Oxford. 

More than 75 disciplines are represented in the easy-to-use AcademicPub content library bursting with 3,000,000 units of easily searchable, copyright-cleared material. In addition, eight "White Label" custom publishing platforms - created specifically for AcademicPub's publishing partners - deliver turn-key distribution of digitized, disaggregated content. 

CUSTOM COLLEGE PLUS, a co-branded custom publishing solution for institutions of higher education, has also grown dramatically in the past year, with schools and, in many cases their bookstore partners, embracing its user-friendly web portal, eBook and professionally published output choices, and the repository of custom course materials created that comes with their use. Twenty schools in the U.S. and Canada are now part of CUSTOM COLLEGE PLUS. 

"The last year has been a period of constant change in the higher ed publishing market, with the "chunking" of content taking center stage, while debate rages over why 'going digital' has not appreciably lowered the cost of books for college students," said Vanderlip. "AcademicPub has not only survived, but thrived amidst this constant upheaval. We are extremely well-positioned for our second year of operations, and look forward to helping institutions and instructors find the best content uniquely suited to their classes, thereby providing top-tier material to students at the lowest possible price." 

Under AcademicPub's "disaggregated model," professors can comb through the AcademicPub library, looking for the very best content in their discipline. They can then mix and match that content into a consistently presented and compelling narrative or set of chapters. Finally, the content can be delivered to students in print or digital format, whichever method leads to the best learning result. 

About AcademicPub

AcademicPub, Sharedbook Inc's technology platform for higher education, assembles, composes, prices and delivers custom textbooks - in eBook and/or print format. AcademicPub allows for immediate creation and inclusion of copyright-cleared content from anywhere, such as web articles, self-generated lectures or from the AcademicPub Content Library. Digital or print distribution generates a fast and easy way for educators to provide an engaging educational experience, with lower prices and up-to-the-minute materials for students. More information and free registration for faculty is available at www.academicpub.com. Headquartered in New York since 2004, SharedBook Inc. is privately held and can be found at www.sharedbook.com. 

Contact:

James A. Boyle 

Boyle Public Affairs

jim@boylepublicaffairs.com 

(571) 213-3979

AcademicPub is One Year Old!

And in only one year...

3,000,000 copyright-cleared items added to our Content Library, providing instantly accessible assets for inclusion in custom course materials 

130 academic publishers represented with content from leading scholars in over 75 disciplines 

8 "White Label" custom publishing platforms created specifically for publishing clients, delivering turn-key distribution of digitized, disaggregated content 

20 Custom College Plus clients live, extending on-campus co-branded reach to over 300 colleges and universities 

2,000 educators and administrators engaged in creating custom materials tailored to their courses, and keeping prices low for their students

Learn more here. And be sure to follow us on your social network of choice, whether that's Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn.