Mobile is exploding, and this has vast implications for education. Here’s a summary of top news and trends for mobile this summer… Smartphones are popular phones. According to Nielsen, 38% of Americans now own smartphones, and 55% of those who purchased a new handset in the past three months bought a smartphone (rather than a dumb one), up [...]

All publications from the National Academies Press (NAP) are now available for free as PDFs. NAP is the publishing arm of the National Academies, and publishes 200+ books a year on topics in science, engineering, and health. Making the PDFs free is the culmination of a decade of research and sales modeling on how to finance a nimble publishing [...]

IDEA’s second mobile app, WikiNodes (see app store link) puts the encyclopedic knowledge of Wikipedia at the fingertips of iPad users. Articles are displayed as nodes that can be touched, dragged and spun around — showing the relations between articles and sections of articles. The app is currently featured in Apple’s app store. Here’s a 30 second demo: The app [...]

Virtual exhibits on tablet devices (e.g., the Apple iPad) put exhibits at the fingertips of students and the public. Visitors can browse science, art or culture from classrooms, during their commutes, or from their sofas. — But where does the money come from? As with physical museums, the problem with charging money for downloads is [...]

Over 70% of U.S. museums are in economic distress, according to a new report from the American Association of Museums. Here are some key findings:

The National STEM Video Game Challenge, awarded the $50k grand prize last week to a professional team that did not meet the eligibility criteria. This story came to my attention last week, when I wrote a blog post about a cool online science game for Middle School kids which won the grand prize as part of the [...]

Museums and archives manage information about their collections, facilitate interdepartmental communication, and make collections available to the public using collection management software. Here’s a rundown of the collection management systems being exhibited at Museums and the Web 2011…

Open access means that readers have free access. But who pays for the operational costs of running a publication? Often it’s the authors, though there are several common business models. How much are authors paying? What do they think about it? And what are some other business models to sustain journals and other kinds of digital [...]

The following were the twenty most visited art exhibitions of 2010:

Museums are going mobile, and many companies are eager to help. At yesterday’s Museums & Mobile 2011 online conference, several vendors promoted their wares. This is a summary of products, approaches, and some alternatives…