E-Books Are Getting into Your Head

Companies selling electronic readers and e-books are tracking the reading and spending habits of users with an eye to helping authors and publishers better understand what readers want, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. Books for the Kindle and Nook, as well as tablets such as the iPad, can record the number of times a reader opens a book app and how much time they spend using the app, and then provide that information to retailers and publishers.

“The bigger trend we’re trying to unearth is where are those drop-offs in certain kinds of books, and what can we do with publishers to prevent that,” said Jim Hilt, vice president of e-books at Barnes & Noble, in the WSJ article. “If we can help authors create even better books than they create today, it’s a win for everybody.”

The article details how e-book social networking site Copia, which has 50,000 subscribers, collects information including age, gender, and school affiliation, as well as how many times a book was downloaded, opened, and read, and shares that data with publishers that request it. Kobo, with a stock of 2.5 million books and more than eight million users of its devices and services, tracks the hours users spend reading a title, while Scholastic uses online feedback from message boards and interactive games to shape its 39 Cluesseries.

Sourcebooks is also incorporating reader feedback into print versions of some of its online serial titles.

“You very rarely get a glimpse into the reader’s mind,” said David Levithan, publisher and editorial director at Scholastic. “With a printed book, there’s no such thing as an analytic. You can’t tell which pages are dog-eared.”

But there are those who disagree with such data gathering. Privacy groups would like to see e-book users protected from having their reading habits recorded. California passed a “reader privacy act” making it more difficult for law-enforcement groups to access consumers’ digital reading records, legislation that the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EEF), Google, and other organizations are also promoting.

“There’s a societal ideal that what you read is nobody else’s business,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the EEF. “Right now, there’s no way for you to tell Amazon, ‘I want to buy your books, but I don’t want you to track what I’m reading.’”

Has 'Innovation' Become a Mindless Buzzword?

The Wall Street Journal ran an article in May suggesting that the term “innovation” has been overused to the point of being cliché. The report showed the word was used 33,528 times in Security and Exchange Commission filings, an increase of 64% over the last five years, and that Amazon.com had 250 books released between February and May 2012 with the work “innovation” in the title.

It’s a subject Jason Tomassini of Education Week has been thinking about for a while. Tomassini followed up a blog on the influx of “innovation officers” in education by gathering responses he received from people who write about and study educational practices on his first post and the WSJarticle.

“It’s not that our education system doesn’t desperately need to be shaken up. But as the WSJ article makes clear, we are applying these adjectives without any analysis, without any reference to history,” wrote Audrey Watters, an education technology writer and blogger for Hack Education. “It’s just marketing schtick and sloppy thinking—and I think that’s both disappointing and dangerous when we want to see substantive change in education and are stuck instead with seeing the mediocre and the mundane touted as transformative.”

Collaborative Efforts on OER Show Promise

Open educational resources are attractive for both students and faculty because, in large part, they are free or very inexpensive.  However, finding and sorting through all the available OER for high-quality materials is a daunting proposition for most faculty members, making recent collaborative efforts between institutions a solution with considerable potential.

“Helping faculty find appropriate resources is a major issue,” said Geoff Cain, director of distance education for the College of the Redwoods, Eureka, CA, in a recent article in Campus Technology. Cain is a member of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, a joint effort to help faculty identify and evaluate appropriate resources.

Another effort, Project Kaleidoscope, brought together faculty teams from eight institutions across the U.S. to design 10 general education courses that use OER materials and share common learning assessments.

The Kaleidoscope courses were used for the first time in the fall of 2011 with promising results. According to a report in Campus Technology, there was a 3.5% improvement in student success (completion with a C or better) in the courses, while students participating in the Kaleidoscope classes saw a 97% reduction in textbook costs.

“It’s so frustrating to community college teachers when their students show up the first week without textbooks because they are waiting for a paycheck or for financial aid,” said M.L. Bettino, former dean of academic affairs at Cerritos College and primary investigator for the Kaleidoscope program. “Now they can get their hands on these materials early and really be prepared on day one.”

New Retail Site Harnesses Consumers' Likes

Building off the rocketing popularity of Pinterest, a new online recommendation site called Wisemarkit allows users to get a cut of the action when someone buys a product they endorsed. The site’s founders hope to drive sales through shopper-to-shopper buzz.

Wisemarkit, which launched July 2, has an interface reminiscent of Pinterest and even requires new users to request an invitation to set up an account, just as Pinterest does. Once an account is open, the user can recommend up to 10 items by pinning pictures and descriptions on a profile page. If somebody clicks through to purchase one of the items, Wisemarkit not only shares the revenue with the recommender but also awards points that can be redeemed to upgrade the profile page with additional features.

At present, Wisemarkit only sources merchandise through Amazon Affiliates and Shopsense programs, but intends to start signing up retail establishments soon, according to a Fast Company report. Retailers could also create accounts applauding their top sellers or hot, new arrivals. A ranking function will also show how many recommendations a product has garnered.

Why restrict accounts to just 10 recommendations at any given time and not an unlimited number? Wisemarkit thinks account-holders will only vouch for those products they really like, which in turn will generate more click-through sales.

Technology and the Older Generation

It’s the Fourth of July, so what better way to kick off this most American of celebrations than with a short YouTube clip from Germany? You may not understand a word of it, but it should provide a chuckle.

Enjoy, and have a safe and happy Fourth.

School Officials Playing Catchup with Technology

The Project Tomorrow report, Speak Up 2011Personalizing the Classroom Experience suggests educators and librarians have taken noticed that students accept the do-it-yourself approach to education that has been made possible through new technologies.

The report, a survey of representing students, parents, teachers, librarians, and administrators from more than 5,800 public and private K-12 schools, shows that educators utilizing social networking sites for professional use has risen from 22% in 2008 to 45% in 2011, Additionally, more than a third of teachers responding are now using online professional learning communities (PLC), compared to one in five just four years ago.

The study suggests a shift in thinking about students bringing devices into the classroom is possible as more educators become familiar with using the technology. The study found that those educators see the gadgets as a way to “increase student engagement (83%), access online textbooks (73%), and extend learning beyond the end of the school day (63%).” The report also found that 27% of administrators surveyed feel that allowing students to bring their own mobile devices into the classroom could be a technology solution to budget issues.

At the same time, the report also states that harnessing the potential of technology in the classroom continues to be a challenge because of all the new tools and services that are available. All the choices make it difficult to choose the best product or app, or to even evaluate which tools work best.

Report Shows Retailers Struggle with Digital Shopping Experience

Traditional retail channels are having a hard time mixing digital into the shopping experience, according to a new report, Omni-Channel 2012: Cross Channel Comes of Age from Retail Systems Research LLC. The firm has been doing the study for six years and this year found that retailers now feel cross-channel marketing will play a role in their business but that merging digital with the bricks-and-mortar selling is the biggest challenge.

The report surveyed 66 retailers on their cross-channel practices and technology adoption plans and found that just 32% of the responding retailers believe they have reached the goal of consolidating the customer shopping experience across all channels.

The report is available as a free download, but registration is required.