Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Amazon to cover most of employees’ tuition

Employees must work for Amazon for three years before receiving tuition benefits.

Amazon will pay up to $2,000 for employees taking online or in-person college courses while working toward an associate’s degree or a technical certification, and educators expect other corporations to replicate the model if it proves successful.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, used the homepage of his company’s website to announce that Amazon warehouse employees would soon have 95 percent of their tuition prepaid if they work toward a two-year degree or certificate in engineering, IT, health care, transportation, and a range of other academic concentrations.

Educators and ed-tech officials said Amazon’s tuition offer differs from similar corporate programs in two ways: The company will only prepay tuition for students entering fields deemed in-demand and high-paying by the federal government—rather than academic areas related to the company’s mission—and the program will cover the vast majority of course and book costs, not just a fraction.…Read More

Two eBooks cost more than Amazon hardcovers

Readers of eBooks might not be able to turn paper pages, lend their copies to friends, or file them away on living room bookshelves. But until now, they did have the comfort of knowing that they paid less for their eBooks than for hardcovers, reports the New York Times. Last week, on Amazon.com, the price for the eBook version of “Fall of Giants” by Ken Follett—published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Group USA—was $19.99; the hardcover edition was $19.39. For  “Don’t Blink,” by James Patterson and Howard Roughan, publisher Little, Brown & Co. charged $14.99 for the eBook, while Amazon priced the hardcover at $14. Customers, unaccustomed to seeing a digital edition more expensive than the hardcover, howled at the price discrepancy and promptly voiced their outrage with negative comments and one-star reviews on Amazon. Several major publishers said those two books were the first they knew of that cost more as eBooks than in hardcover on Amazon. The skirmish over prices is possible because of deals that publishers negotiated with Amazon this year that allowed the publishers to set their own prices on eBooks, while Amazon continues to choose the discount from the list price on hardcovers. That upended a previous understanding by Kindle customers, who were used to paying only $9.99 for an eBook…

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Feds: Make eReaders accessible to all students

Colleges have agreed to abandon Kindle pilot programs because of accessibility issues.
Some colleges have agreed to abandon Kindle pilot programs because of accessibility issues.

The federal government will help schools and colleges using eReaders such as the Amazon Kindle to comply with laws giving students with disabilities equal access to emerging education technologies, officials announced.

The Departments of Education and Justice stressed the responsibility of colleges and universities to use accessible eReaders in a letter published June 29, after more than a year of complaints from low-sighted and blind students attending colleges that have piloted eReader programs.

Many eReaders have a text-to-speech function that reads words aloud, but the devices lack menus that people who are blind or have low vision can navigate.…Read More

Digital self-publishing upends traditional book world

A technological disruption is loosening traditional publishers’ grip on the book market, reports the Wall Street Journal—and giving new power to technology companies like Amazon to shape which books and authors succeed. Much as blogs have bitten into the news business and YouTube has challenged television, digital self-publishing is creating a powerful new niche in books that’s threatening the traditional industry. Once derided as “vanity” titles by the publishing establishment, self-published books suddenly are able to thrive by circumventing the establishment. “If you are an author and you want to reach a lot of readers, up until recently you were smart to sell your book to a traditional publisher, because they controlled the printing press and distribution. That is starting to change now,” says Mark Coker, founder of Silicon Valley start-up Smashwords Inc., which offers an eBook publishing and distribution service. Fueling the shift is the growing popularity of electronic books, which could reach as high as 20 percent to 25 percent of the total book market by 2012, according to Mike Shatzkin, a publishing consultant, up from an estimated 5 percent to 10 percent today. It’s unclear how much of a danger digital self-publishing poses to the big publishers, who still own the industry’s big hits. But some publishers say that online self-publishing, and the entry of newcomers such as Amazon into the market, could mark a sea change in publishing…

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Amazon threatens eBook publishers as Apple looms

As Apple builds its electronic bookstore, Amazon.com is trying to use its clout to hold on to its early lead in the market, reports the New York Times. Amazon.com has threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online unless they agree to a detailed list of concessions regarding the sale of electronic books, according to two industry executives with direct knowledge of the discussions. The hardball approach comes less than two months after Amazon shocked the publishing world by removing the “buy” buttons from its site for thousands of printed books from Macmillan, one of the country’s six largest publishers, in a dispute over eBook pricing. Amazon is the largest online seller of printed books and the biggest eBook seller in the United States. The company is pressuring publishers just as Apple is also preparing to sell digital books for reading on its iPad tablet, which will reach the market in early April. Five of the country’s six largest publishers—Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, and Penguin—already have reached deals with Apple to sell their books through its iBookstore, which will be featured on the iPad. (The holdout is Random House…)

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Amazon launches free Kindle app for Blackberry

Amazon.com said Feb. 18 it is launching a new free Kindle application that will give customers access to over 420,000 books on a range of BlackBerry devices, Reuters reports. Called “Kindle for Blackberry”, the free application allows customers using BlackBerry devices on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and other U.S. carriers easy wireless access to Kindle books, most for $9.99 or less. “Since the launch of our popular Kindle for iPhone app last year, customers have been asking us to bring a similar experience to the BlackBerry,” said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle…

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