An International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) workshop focusing on digital publishing in education was formally announced today.
The event is scheduled to take place on October 29-30, 2013 at the Loews Boston Hotel.
It’s being sponsored by Pearson Education and organizationally co-sponsored by W3C and IMS Global Learning, with corporate sponsors including Aptara and SPi Global.
From Today’s Request for Participation Announcement:
The workshop goal is to assess the current state of the art and identify critical gaps that need to be filled to advance the effective global adoption and use of e-textbooks and digital learning materials. Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to share their own perspectives, requirements, and ideas to help ensure that EPUB, the overall Open Web Platform of which it’s a part, and eLearning-specific standards harmoniously evolve to better meet the needs of education publishing.
EDUPUB workshop program co-chairs are Paul Belfanti (Director, Content Architecture, Pearson North America) and Markus Gylling (CTO, IDPF and DAISY Consortium.). Workshop program committee members including executives and senior leaders from W3C, IMS Global Learning, Pearson, Apex Covantage, Aptara, Benetech, Cengage, CourseSmart, Google, Hachette Livre, Ingram/VitalSource, Inkling, Jouve, Kaplan, KERIS (Korea), McGraw-Hill Education, SPi Global, Sophia University (Japan) and other leading organizations involved in education publishing .
Prospective participants are asked to submit a position paper or statement of interest by August 23, 2013.
Learn More About the Workshop
Workshop Focus and Goals
The focus of this Workshop is therefore to bring global experts together, across disciplines of publishing and education, to advance implementation of EPUB 3 as the standard structured format for e-textbooks and other digital content. The goal of the Workshop is to share knowledge about what’s working, uncover obstacles to more widespread implementation and interoperability, and take steps to remove them in order to catalyze adoption and market growth.
Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to share their own perspectives, requirements, and ideas to help ensure that EPUB, the underlying Open Web Platform of which it’s a part, and eLearning-specific standards harmoniously evolve to better meet the needs of education publishing.
The Workshop’s primary goal is to develop a shared consensus about specific next steps that the IDPF, its members, and other standards organizations and stakeholders need to take to further advance the usefulness of EPUB in education publishing. This might include formation of IDPF Working Groups to develop modular extensions to EPUB, joint activities between multiple organizations to better harmonize and integrate standards, and work by stakeholder communities to develop profiles or guidelines for use of EPUB in specific contexts and workflows.
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