What We Do: Emerging Technologies

Pioneer new systems
From the day over 9 years ago when we took on our first project, an early eBook, we have been mastering new proprietary and open source systems for delivering all sorts of educational content. We have helped create digital lesson plans; assessment and related remediation; student activities and tutorials; and completely digital TEs and SEs, often as very early users of evolving publishing engines. We thoroughly learn the front end, the back end, and the inevitable quirks of each authoring environment in order to take full advantage of the technology. We have perfected our trade to the extent that we have even been called upon to train new client staff in their own systems.

Build new processes
Hand in hand with our very methodical, leave-no-stone-unturned approach to mastering a new system, we internalize the content it's meant to deliver. Together these factors enable us to help our clients with all aspects of creating a product in a new system, including devising the most efficient, effective process for bringing the product to life. Our experience with such a wide range of system types, platforms, and functionalities has made us expert at collaborating with our clients' engineering and development staff to anticipate pitfalls and improve production, deployment, and QA processes. During one project involving highly innovative software, we were able to make suggestions for back end system changes that cut costs in half.

Proceed fearlessly
Because our editors are well versed in the content, pedagogy, and technology behind digital educational materials and are skilled in all sorts of digital publishing systems, they approach new technologies with relish. We are excited by the ever-expanding opportunity to present educational material in new and more effective ways, and we enjoy the challenge of turning innovative ideas into reality. In 2008 we storyboarded a publisher's legacy content in the context of interactive whiteboard use. Subsequently, we were trained by Promethean and Smart as developers. We then went on to create our own fully featured, engaging IWB lessons in coordination with a local school district to explore the pedagogical potential of this new device. We have also closely followed the evolution of 1-to-1 technologies such as eReaders and tablet computers, and we are beginning work on approaches to developing content for the iPad.