Where Are You In Your Digital Journey?

I think of blogs as informative and contemplative, which brings me today to the ethereal and yet concrete future of educational publishing. It seems many of our clients are in the midst of gigantic internal shifts ranging from how they are organized to how they produce all types of print, digital, and blended products. While it has been going on for a while, the transitions are now going to shift hiring, roles, reporting structures, and the selling conventions of all products.

What has that meant for iD8-TripleSSS Media Development, LLC? We now have an Advisory Board comprised of some of the greatest minds in educational publishing from K-12 and higher education. We have added a Managing Editor, Allison Murray, effective November 1. Her job title, we decided, doesn't need "digital" in it because the shift now means that it's understood that we are ALL doing working in the digital space. We work with a wonderful company, Finder of Fabulous, who is directing our social media strategy, and we've increased our bandwidth for speed, storage, and transmission because we work almost solely in the cloud now. We totally revamped www.id8triplesss.com to be fully reflective of all that is noted above.

It's fascinating to us here at iD8-TripleSSS who started writing content for the digital space five years ago in small doses and then three years ago in large doses to now being a leader in providing digital content. Today, we are confident in not only writing the content but also building the product as needed—ranging from courseware to curriculum.

What does that mean for products and how students view them? We are working on two App products designed for the iPad-type tablets (the big iPads but I'm sure it'll be for the smaller one, too, now). Students are getting annoyed if their texts are not available online, even if they bought the print version. Students are getting annoyed by carrying large textbooks and would rather get them online--and will pay for them in an online version just to not carry them. This alone will drive what teachers and professors advocate for their students, along with price. This has led to our working on digital texts, acquiring authors to create digital textbooks, and developing content that fills these needs. And yet, we love our print products just as much!

Open source options are finding their way into our bag of tricks as well as this market continues to form actively and “disruptively.”  We don’t think open source options are disruptive; they are innovative and are changing the way we all view access to content and our expectation of how it’s built.

Join us on this educational digital journey; draw upon our knowledge and excitement; let us bring you forward with us!

Susan

In Attendance at EdNet2012

Earlier this month I attended EdNet2012, a major networking conference for professionals involved in the educational market-space. There were lots of technology organizations there. Large organizations such as Kno and Overdrive, and up-and-comers like us, iD8-TripleSSS, who were there to learn and make new contacts. Although the conference saddled the educational market-space, the sessions and companies were dominated by players in the K-12 market.

Several promising connections were made at EdNet, especially with technology partners that build or have functional products essential to our future service offerings.  We had meetings with companies that have state-of-the-art platforms for e-learning, m-learning and everything in between. We also met with some fun companies that may not be a direct fit, but have really wonderful products meant to engage kids of all ages-including me. The company that particularly stands out is FableVision.  Check out their Mayan Mysteries social studies adventure that is hot off the press.

iD8-TripleSSS has always been strong in higher education and, the vocational and career markets. We have a smaller, but steady flow of business in K-12 including key areas such as STEM and several of the health professions. We are currently creating content for the lower grades for a 2013 App release and some other smaller products. Perhaps our biggest take-away from EdNet is that it has motivated us to move swiftly towards some new business initiatives in the K-12 area that will transition some of our services into a “service- as - product model” - stay tuned for more on this in later posts.

There were specific themes that came up over and over in EdNet and I want to share them:

• Implementing the Common Core on a state-by-state basis
• New online models
• Digitally enhanced learning
• Assessments, data, analytics
• Adaptive testing
• Interactive textbook platforms
• Blended learning solutions
• School options
• Solutions for the special needs population
• Models of instruction and design

Over the next few months we will elaborate more on these themes and bring in some guest bloggers to share their thoughts. I continue to be excited, motivated and grateful to work in educational publishing at a time when there is so much opportunity to innovate and set new standards in learning. 

Marion