Amazon has entered the textbook market swinging with their new large format Kindle DX. They’ve partnered with three of the biggest textbook publishers (Pearson, Cengage, and Wiley) and with several universities (Arizona State, Case Western, Princeton, Virginia) for early implementation. No specifics on pricing, but if this is handled well, it could seriously mean the end of traditional textbook publishing.

http://tinyurl.com/newkindledx
http://live.gizmodo.com/

Welcome to Zon! | Enter Zon: “By interacting in the Zon environment you will be exposed to Chinese language and cultural knowledge in a new and exciting way. Everything that you do in the game is another chance to learn new words, phrases and cultural info about China. Never before has learning Chinese been more fun.”

(Via OLDaily.)

PlayCrafter Lets You Play and Create Casual Games (The Startup Review): “PlayCrafter is a Flash-based website that lets users easily create a variety of 2D games. The games use physics and are created by dragging and dropping customizable game pieces. Users can upload their own graphics for all of a game’s pieces, including the background of the game. Creators can build upon the ideas of others by editing or personalizing existing games and discussing their games with the community. Games can easily be shared and posted to MySpace, Facebook or embedded on any website. Creators earn a share of revenues generated by their games.”

(Via Mashable.)

So as much of a gearhead as I find myself becoming over the years, I have not yet become fully sold on the iPod Touch. The new OS is totally sweet, and some of the new apps are mindblowing, but I just can’t seem to fall in like with the text entry methods. I type quite well, so the decrease in speed and accuracy is just totally frustrating. Sometimes the auto-correct feature works great, but it isn’t consistent enough to work it’s way into a working pattern. I’ve used a Blackberry and a Treo for several years now, and the little chiclet buttons provide just enough tactile context to allow me to get going at a pretty good clip. I am getting faster with the iTouch, but I am not there yet. We’ll see.

The Ed Techie: Digital literacies: Martin Weller riffs on the concept of digital literacies.

(Via blamb .)

Knol: a unit of knowledge: “Welcome to Knol.
A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic.”

(Via TechCrunch.)

From Age of Empires to Zork: Using Games in the Classroom | Academic Commons: “With the remarkable growth in the gaming industry in recent years, educators have begun looking at games as a way of reaching students in this new digital world. While games have certainly been the target of criticism and even vilification in the popular media, many do possess qualities beneficial to education, such as the presentation of scenarios, problem solving, collaboration, and metrics.”

Corporate Social Networks Are A Waste of Money, Study Finds – ReadWriteWeb: “How would you feel if you spent more than $1 million throwing a party and less than 100 or even 1,000 people showed up? That sinking feeling is spreading over corporate boardrooms around the nation, according to study performed by Ed Moran, a director at consulting mega-firm Deloitte.”

(Via OLDaily.)

Amazon To Target $5.5 Billion Textbook Market With New Kindle?

I was just telling a colleague yesterday that this would seem to be a match made in heaven. Someone must have been listening…

Students Who Use ‘Clickers’ Score Better On Physics Tests: “Hand-held electronic devices called clickers are helping college students learn physics, according to a series of research studies.”