Hello, I wanted to pass along the following news in case you or anyone you know are educators or trainers:
O'Reilly and Safari Books Online announce SafariU, a new service that offers computer technology educators a rich platform for creating both online and print materials tailored precisely to your teaching needs. Safari Books Online is a joint venture of O'Reilly and the Pearson Technology Group. With SafariU (http://safariu.oreilly.com), instructors can compile a custom book from a wealth of information resources, and deliver it to students at a lower cost than a traditional textbook. The custom book is professionally printed and delivered in as little as two weeks. In addition to print books, SafariU offers an online subscription to a syllabus that links to the complete content of up to 10 of the books used in the custom book, plus any supplementary information the instructor chooses, including audio, video, additional reading material, exercises, and links to outside resources. SafariU also provides a peer network where instructors can share learning objects and other teaching resources. "Over the past few years, as we've converted our books to digital formats, we realized that the shift from paper to pixels opened up a host of new possibilities for delivering information," said CJ Rayhill, SafariU General Manager. "Just as iTunes made it possible for music fans to find and build playlists of songs from many albums, SafariU lets trainers and educators remix, add to, and assemble digital chunks of information into a unique package. It's designed to take full advantage of three classic disruptive technologies that are now converging: digital information, print-on-demand, and web services." "Students and faculty want more choice and value in their instructional materials," said Gary June, Chief Marketing Officer of Pearson Education. "SafariU continues blazing the path O'Reilly and Pearson started four years ago and adds even more flexibility to the university environment." SafariU has been available to beta testers since January 2005. Several hundred instructors are currently using and testing the service. Beta tester Kent Sandoe, Professor of Management Information Systems, California State University, Chico, commented, "O'Reilly owns a tremendous quantity of well-written, valuable information. The fact that they're willing to disaggregate it, allowing a professor to go and re-aggregate the content in a way that is meaningful to students, to a particular audience, to a particular course--that's revolutionary." There is no cost to educators for SafariU. A SafariU textbook costs 16 cents per page, including the cover and binding, so the price of an average book of 200 pages is $32, plus the bookstore markup. A course subscription to SafariU's online resources is less than $10 per month per student. Visit SafariU to view a video demo and sign up for access: http://safariu.oreilly.com -- Neil Schneider pacneil_at_linuxgeek_dot_net http://www.paccomp.com Key fingerprint = 67F0 E493 FCC0 0A8C 769B 8209 32D7 1DB1 8460 C47D Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it - Mark Twain -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-newbie
