Had a great conversation with a CourseLoad rep this morning. I found their
approach quite compelling for the following reasons.
1. They are coming at this problem from the perspective of the educational
institution, not the textbook publisher.
2. They have a simple lightweight approach that integrates well with most
learning management systems, and works with Macs, Window and Linux.
3. They are fully open to supporting open-source textbooks as these evolve.
4. They seem to have a model which allows the textbook companies to make
money even with pricing books at a significantly lower cost.
5. They hope to have an iPad app available by next fall.
6. They have a print-on-demand option for those who want a paper copy.
They started experiments with a couple of independent schools this semester
and these appear to be going well.
We will be doing a webinar with them in the near future and I'll share any
additional information I pick up.
Fred
On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Steve Taffee <staffee@castilleja.org> wrote:
> I had a conversation with Courseload this morning, and have a follow-up
> scheduled for next week.
>
> From what i understand, Courseload does take existing textbooks and creates
> a PDF-like document, which they then access through their own reader to
> allow for some social collaboration features within a class. Books are
> purchased, not leased, by students.
>
> I see this model as transitional; a bridge that enables teachers who are
> familiar with textbooks to see that model in play with e-readers and
> computers. Many teachers will quickly come to see that e-texts could be so
> much more with embedded links, rich media contents, and built-in hooks to
> their LMS.
>
> I agree with Fred and Bill about the potential of a consortium of schools
> to
> contribute content. If you are not familiar with CK12.org, they are a
> non-profite creating open-content textbooks (they call them Flexbooks) that
> I think might make an interesting partner. Having several teachers work
> cooperatively also reduces the burden of a single person creating a text,
> not to mention the richer ideas that emerge from such collaboration.
>
> Having schools collaborate on creating textbooks also has the benefit of
> helping to capture the knowledge and pedagogy of master teachers, some of
> whom are nearing retirement age, and whose loss to a school represents much
> more than replacing one headcount with another. Knowledge retention is as
> important in schools as it is in business.
>
> s
> -----
> Steve Taffee | Director of Strategic Projects
> Castilleja School | staffee@castilleja.org
>
>
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