Textbooks based on the iPad gained a boost Wednesday. Interactive learning developer Inkling announced a “multi-million dollar financing” deal with two educational publishing giants. McGraw-Hill and Pearsons became minority investors in the San Francisco-based company which produces software enabling students to interact with iPad-based textbooks.
“Until now, digital textbooks have failed to gain real traction because they add little value over the printed book,” Inkling founder and CEO Matt MacInnis said. Inkling’s software allows readers to add comments and share textbooks with friends. “We build every textbook from the ground up for the iPad to create a more engaging learning experience,” MacInnis adds.
Sequoia Capital, Sherpalo Ventures, Felicis Ventures and Kapor Capital also reportedly were involved in the funding.
Inkling isn’t the first software developer hoping to link textbook publishers with the iPad as a new learning platform. In early 2010 we reported on Scrollmotion attracting publishers’ attention. The company adapts existing books for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Both McGraw-Hill and Pearson were involved in Scrollmotion’s creation of e-text books.
Of course, McGraw-Hill may be best known for spilling the beans about the original iPad to CNBC – a day before Apple CEO Steve Jobs was to officially announce the ground-breaking tablet. Naturally, such as faux pas caused the text-book publisher to be dropped from the list of companies invited to share the stage with the iPad’s unveiling.
Although the iPad is gaining traction in some classrooms, some in the publishing industry, as well as academia questioned the wisdom.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
18 responses to “iPad Learning Firm Inkling Gets Multi-Million Dollar Funding from Educational Giants”
Hopefully they get the textbooks into the iPad. I hate carrying textbooks that weight 10 pounds each!
This is clearly the future of textbooks. The advantages are massive. Great to see the publishers looking to the future.
i would kill for textbooks on the iPad. i don’t care if they cost the same as print; print is useless. the search tool in a textbook by itself is priceless.
I would gladly pay to have ALL of my textbooks fully compatible on an iPad.
Let’s hope they also have the vision and foresight to make a compatible Android tablet version as well so that educators won’t be limited to a monopoly by one manufacturer.
save the earth will print-less. more tree will be useful for other stuff.
moving to digital, there is good and bad, but thats what we see the future.
Until I can re-sell or buy e-texbooks via craigslist or at least purchase these at a greater than 60 percent discount I’m not interested. I always recover at least 50-70 percent of my book cost by re-selling. The manufacturers save 50-90 percent by the digital method of distribution and I don’t expect them to pass on anything close to that percentage. So, unless they do I’ll stick with Craigslist thx.
As usual this eco-friendly stuff is a cash cow in disguise. Let’s see if they pass on their cost savings. My guess is they may take off 30 percent or they could end up charging more.
If they did it in Pdf form it would be easy but they would probably avoid that. Or, if they offered it as a Kindle or Nook book that has apps on both platforms.