Online Education, Metatextuality: A Survival of the Fittest

The online education content community should be taking notes from the book publishing industry. It's an adapt-or-perish world in which those who embrace technology such as tablet computers and apps are able to thrive, while those who stick to the same old packaging are doomed to die off.
Metatextuality is key here. If your content has it, you are entering the world of the average internet-user: a world that's dynamic and constantly in dialogue with other sources.
The death of textbooks
With more and more students getting their degrees online, education technology is wildly expanding. Not only online education students are finding textbooks irrelevant, but those who attend brick-and-mortar schools are increasingly opting out of buying the course textbooks.
In many subjects, textbooks are going the way of the dinosaurs. While textbooks like language, philosophy, and other humanities remain necessary, many other course textbooks such as biology and math are becoming obsolete as students use Google to find the answers they're looking for.
All the information is out there, and students no longer depend on textbooks to find it in a consolidated format.
The transformation of one publishing house
In a recent Reuters article, Mark Egan profiles the innovative New York publisher Nicholas Callaway, who saw wild success with the publishing of the children's app book "Miss Spider's Tea Party" on Apple's iOS platform. His company began publishing regular paper books in the 1980's but now concentrates its energy exclusively on iOS app versions.
With an openness to more dynamic story-telling methods, Callaway's company transformed from a traditional publishing house to a technologically innovative one.
From stories to learning Content: the transformation of your learning system
Just as you can tell a story in a number of ways, you can teach in a number of ways, in an endless number of formats and media. The way we interact with stories, news, educational content, and all kinds of information online offers a range of possibilities for online education systems.
I also loved the concept of another successful publishing company described in Egan's article is DMC Worldwide, whose most recent venture is Copia Interactive: social e-reading.
"We think there is space around the book for community to grow," said Seth Kaufman, Copia's vice president of marketing and merchandising.
Copia Interactive, still in beta, allows users to not only buy books, but also inteact with one another. They can annotate books, publishing their comments and reactions.
When Kaufman explains Copia to publishers, he likes to tell them, "There are many friends I have who would never buy a Sarah Palin book, but if Jon Stewart annotated Sarah Palin's book, they might buy that book."
As online education content developers, how might we tap into the potential of metatextuality?
How to make your online learning content metatextual
If it's online, information has the potential to be interactive and metatextual. Meaning, it can refer to information outside the text, like linking pages in a blog. It can create and be part of a vast network of information-there's no limit to its scope.
Education, with or without professors and textbook companies who stubbornly stick to traditional methods, is moving in that direction.
In order to adapt and thrive, online education platforms must join the publishing industry and offer an interactive and metatextual learning experience to their learners. Platforms like Coggno offer a simple way to tap into the interactive potential of online learning for those both beginner and expert learning content developers.

Online Financial News - Easily Upgrade Your Financial Knowledge

Everybody needs finance to live happily. Finance can fulfill small and big needs easily. People work non-stop to earn income. It is important that one should stay updated with financial news all the time in order to grow more and to enhance their lifestyle. Earlier it was tough for people to keep themselves updated with financial news but with the blooming internet technology staying updated with finance news has become easier and convenient. Online financial news helps the people to upgrade their finance related knowledge in an efficient way.
The online financial news help to keep the various professionals, businessmen and even students to stay updated with the current happenings of various business and financial sectors. In order to grow in life and to make your dream come true staying upgraded with the currents trends can preferred to be the best option. With the help of online mode you can find there are various sites available, which are ready to advance your financial knowledge with a simple click of mouse.
In this fast pace of life and huge competition, staying updated with the latest trends can prove to be helpful in various ways. After liberalization and globalization the economy of the country is at the highest peak which has enhanced the business opportunities for the people. So, in order to manage these opportunities in better way, online financial news can prove to be an effective option to boost up relations with each other in terms of financial business activities.
The online financial news sites offer you the latest financial news around the world, while just sitting at the comfort from your home. You are suggested to do the research well and understand the concepts and motives behind financial news carefully. In this way only you can select the appropriate deal according to your requirements.
Online financial news educates the people with latest financial news that can help them to secure their future and expand their business accordingly. These sites enhance the knowledge of the people about financial market so that they cannot get mislead or puzzled while taking decision. These sites have solution for all financial queries of the people.

Fighting For Education And Innovation

An article from the international CAD software company's Chief of Education, released in February, is stating the great importance of the next generations correct education. He fervently states that it is not only the use of new technologies we need to teach as they become implemented more and more in educational settings, but the need for the understanding of how the technology works. Otherwise, we could leave a generation that can perfectly well use the technologies, but can't innovate nor even fix the products.
The Chief of Education at AutoDesk, the producers of AutoCAD, states that part of the problem is that unlike just a few decades ago, people are not learning what is behind the box, i.e. how it functions. We instead go to a professional or manufacturer to fix our products as they get more and more complex. Although this does mean we usually get our product back in one piece, we are not learning how technologies work, nor passing on the interest in learning how technologies work to our future generations. He simply puts it that youngsters are not as 'curious' as they once were, which could possibly harm the future generations ability to innovate.
A future generation without innovation or the skills to fix products could be potentially disastrous. It could leave many de-skilled and unable to create and design elements, which could be important to our lives in the next 50 year's time. Thus, it is up to the education industry to make those important decisions that produce a better education system, where people can rediscover their wonder for innovation and understand how technologies work. It is also up to us as a society to adapt education to our new needs and the new brilliant minds of this generation and the next, which are our future.
The Chief of Education at AutoDesk was inspired by the TED 2011 conference, named the Rediscovery of Wonder, which was host to a number of influential and inspirational thinkers in a variety of industries, from science to the arts. It's important that in such a time, where we are facing environmental and economic issues, that we keep our future generation's inspired to innovate, whether that be in science or the arts. Like the Chief of Education at AutoDesk states, we must teach our children how to innovate, in order for them to succeed in the future. The future is after all in their hands...