Over the past couple of years, KF has been tracking the rise of the educational Tablet PC as a key educational platform, and late last year we discussed the possibility of a regional digital library (cf. here and here -- also here) based in say a leading Seminary's library facility. We also talked about what it would be like to move to course manuals with readers, workbooks, assignments etc as a low-cost replacement for the traditional textbook.
Following up, here is a Fox News story on Kno, and what it is doing to digitise and enhance the traditional College textbook, at perhaps 1/2 the cost (or in the showcase example, 1/8 the cost):
(I probably would have given my eye-teeth for some of those 3-D models in Chemistry, Physics, and Math as well as Management! Notice, no 2 gross sales iPad App, and no. 1 educational, c. Oct 17, 2011. The market is definitely there, the key step is to tap it, especially for our region. As I have been arguing, the key to that is the 7" or so US$100 or so Android tablet in a folio with keyboard, which should be on us in significant numbers, within the next 1 1/2 years now. [Cf. here on what Google's Nexus Android Tegra-2 at about US$ 150 should begin to do in the market. Notice MySpark, here and here. Interesting debate, here. Another. here, on open educational resources and rough guess cost-benefit analyses.])
ScrollMotion, although focussed on the iPad (cf. here on the significance of the iPad), gives us a good idea of some further possibilities that include not only textbooks but magazines, business materials and more. (Here is another idea, and it includes a simulated first person e-textbook experience.)
All of these, of course, could be key enabling technologies for the AA CCS programme (cf. here, too, on paying its way; and, here and here also on Schools of Hope for Haiti and the wider region) that has been a main focus for a suggested capacity building and mobilisation initiative for renewal, transformation and the global mission of the church in our time. END
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F/N: Any techies out there interested in working on developing digital productivity edu, a fresh approach, starting with a fresh approach to programming? Here is a contact.
