Nature, the folks who brought you the free life sciences learning community Scitable, are today announcing “Principles of Biology”, a college level electronic textbook. Building upon the cross-platform success of Scitable, the new textbook offers a variety of fully interactive features, including quizzes and assessments, an online gradebook for instructors, and more. Perhaps most notable in this era of constant upgrades and in-app purchases is that this text will be continually updated with top-notch content from Nature’s editing team at no additional cost to anyone who has purchased a copy. “Our interactive textbooks, since they are “born digital”, are designed to capitalize to the maximum degree on the progressive possibilities which digital media opens up for the education space: new distribution models, new learning models, new pricing models. Our textbooks are designed to make students active rather than passive learners throughout the learning process,” says Vikram Savkar, SVP & Publishing Director at Nature Publishing Group. → Read More
A couple of timely education items hit my inbox this morning. First, a report suggests that U.S. students suck at science. From the report,”less than one-half of students are demonstrating solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter.” Granted, ‘science’ is an extremely broad term and encompasses many different disciplines, but the gist of that report is pretty troubling. This might be a good time to remind readers of Scitable, Nature Publishing Group’s free online science library. Although limited in scope to genetics, cell biology and ecology, they’ve been growing since last we covered them, with many new articles as well as a new guide to life science careers and English Communication for Scientists. The latter, alone, should be worth your time today.
Also word comes today that McGraw Hill is jumping into the mobile education market with their upcoming mConnect platform: “an open-standard mobile learning platform designed to bridge the skills gap in emerging markets.” mConnect will initially roll out in India, and will, much like Scitable, have a strong focus on cellphone-as-learning-device. Specific details are lacking right now, but mConnect looks to be a more general education initiative. → Read More
We covered Scitable.com, the social network for science education from Nature Publishing Group, back in May. At that time, I was told that a mobile-friendly version of the site was in the works. Today that mobile site is ready, as seen in the screenshot above.
Scitable’s Vikram Savkar has been studying broadband adoption, and has drawn some interesting conclusions. Obviously one of those conclusions is that a science education site like Scitable isn’t a one-size-fits-all operation. As mentioned in our original review of Scitable, a large portion of the target audience that Scitable is courting may not have easy and regular access to a modern PC with a broadband connection. Instead, many will be using mobile devices. → Read More
Social networks are a dime a dozen. Many of them focus on the social, or the networking, independent of other aspects that might bring people together. It’s no big surprise that many of these social networks fail, or only reach specific niche audiences. As such, it was with a bit of skepticism that I approached Scitable.com, a social network for science research and education from the folks at Nature Publishing Group. A quick examination of the site reveals a vibrant community of educators and learners. I had the opportunity to speak with Vikram Savkar, SVP & Publishing Director at Nature Publishing Group, who is currently spearheading the Scitable.com initiative, to learn more about it. → Read More
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