Notes from the oil tanker

Few words have been so prevalent in ELT as ‘EdTech’ and it has not been unusual to attend conferences where perhaps more than half of the talks on the schedule made at least some reference to the impending digital disruption sweeping into our sector and how best to prepare for it, avoid it or pretend it didn’t exist. Pearson’s Brian Engquist gives us his take on how to proceed.

The EdTech Boogie

It is educational publishers, in partnership with the educators and the learners who are their customers, who are best placed to show the world how this great deluge of information can best be mediated because that  is their business and always has been.

SimCityEDU: Learning What Games Can Do

Way back in June we wrote about GlassLab’s partnership with Pearson and Electronic Arts and their collective efforts to develop a game-based learning product out of SimCity. Well, GlassLab launched the first edition of this hugely anticipated super game earlier in November. Called SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! The game puts learners in contact with a hugely effective … Read more

For ELT publishing people, which path to choose?

Last week, Karen White from ELTTeacher2Writer shared a great article from Digiday, in which they asked digital and print media editors to share the best career advice they’d ever received. One item that jumped out at me was this, from Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic magazine: the best general career advice I’ve heard — but have … Read more

More news for Knewton

More interesting news from adaptive learning technology provider Knewton today, as they announced their latest publisher partnership, this time with Cambridge University Press, and the opening of a new office in London. The partnership will see the Knewton API integrated with the Cambridge LMS platform, which currently serves over 250,000 students and teachers globally. The move … Read more

Have ELT brands become more important than ELT authors?

In case you missed it, last week the UK publishing industry was jolted out of its early-summer slumber when the news broke that Charlie Redmayne was to replace Victoria Barnsley as CEO of Harper Collins UK. In a piece last Friday for The Guardian, entitled Bad week for women in publishing as two giants step down, which also covered the news that Gail Rebuck would be replaced as chief executive of Random House UK (now Penguin Random House, of course) by Penguin’s Tom Weldon, the following caught my eye (my emphasis):

Though both Barnsley, who is 59, and Rebuck, 61, could be as tough as anyone when required, they have been author-centred. “What they’ve done is to enable editors. It’s not that they necessarily are those editors. Authors feel the most enormous respect for them and faith in them,” said the source.

Augmented Reality: The Edtech From Way Out

The closer we get to the year 2015, the less certain I am that I’ll actually be able to purchase a hoverboard with which to zoom around town. Although the tech-laden utopia of Back To The Future Part 2  has been celebrated for its prescient creativity, I’ve come to realise that there comes a time when I have to manage my own sci-fi-fuelled expectations.

Pearson betting the house on digital

Pearson_Without_Strapline_Blue_RGB-280Details continue to emerge about Pearson’s massive restructure and what it might mean for ELT. The consistent theme is a relentless focus on digital at the expense of all else. Basically, Pearson believe they know where the education market is going and are willing to bet everything on it, even though their current customers aren’t really there yet. But then, according to what follows, maybe that’s not a concern.

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Pearson CEO, John Fallon

If you’ve missed the hype so far, the world’s biggest education publisher is spending £150m on a total restructure which involves an immediate move to digital learning, a focus on emerging markets, and a transformation from publisher to education services provider.

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GlobalEnglish makes its play

Image by Flickr user pennstatenews. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic
Image by Flickr user pennstatenews. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic

The next time you’re sat opposite that businessperson on the train engrossed in their BlackBerry or iPhone, don’t assume they’re frantically trying to get to Inbox Zero. It’s just as likely they’re trying to get to the next level of Angry Birds.

Or so GlobalEnglish might have us believe.

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See you later, incubator: Pearson invests in Edtech startups

Educational publishing behemoth Pearson is putting its dollar into the Edtech startup sector in order to help propel the company further into the 21st century and away from its long-established yet out-dated business models. This move follows hot on the heels of Kaplan linking up with TechStars to offer an edtech accelerator program in New York City. Pearson Catalyst is a new … Read more