Jan

Copia Brings Social Capability to Digital Textbooks

A lot of news has surfaced recently about the popularity of social reading, which enables fans of a particular book to share annotations and comments across existing social media platforms. At the same time, the world of digital textbooks got a boost from Apple and several other companies since the beginning of this year, making the realization of more widespread publication of e-textbooks that much more feasible.

Copia has found a way to merge the two, and was on hand at Digital Book World this week to demonstrate the functionality and benefits of being able to share educational material with other users. The possibilities for study groups, for additional notes and discussions from course professors, and even from students using the same text at an entirely different college or university with a different professor are nearly limitless.

A narrative explanation and demonstration video from Copia’s interview with GoodEReader can be found below.

Mercy Pilkington (1082 Posts)

Mercy Pilkington is a young-adult author and a teacher in a correctional facility. She does not have a single textbook in her classroom. With the top-of-the-line technology at her disposal and the low reading ability of many of her students, there’s no need for standard paper texts. Instead she relies on e-readers, iPads, desktop PCs, Polycom video conferencing equipment for virtual field trips, live streaming for science demonstrations, and text-to-speech read-aloud software to teach English and science. Within the next ten years, public school classrooms across the country are going to look a lot more like Mercy’s classroom because the educational possibilities with these kinds of technologies are limitless. Have a question? Send an email to mercypilkington@yahoo.com