Taihu Book Conference

I was fortunate to attend one day of the 19th Annual Taihu Book Conference.  This is a fairly new facility and to say that it is large would be an understatement.  I could not find the exact size but I would estimate that it covers about 2 million square feet.  The main building has five levels and that is the showcase of vendors, including publishers from all over the world.  While I was there I noticed Scholastic, Harvard Press, Houghton Mifflin and a couple more.  It was an impressive warehouse of publishing materials from all over the world.  Of course, the largest by far were the Chinese publishers.

During the day there were four seminars that I attended that had to do with the digital domain.  It is evident that the publishers are working hard to create digital material both on-line and in the form of textbooks.  What I heard however, was that the strength of digital text books will be for the university level and the school level will be online course materials.

All of the publishers are working with online portals that will encompass their curricular materials enhanced with added learning opportunities for students.  Many are embracing the L21 ideas where they can, but this is proving to be difficult given the rather open nature of them.  No surprise that assessment is a big part of these portals and in some cases can be individualized to the class or student.

Over all the day was well worthwhile.  I still did not find the connection to eTextbooks I am looking for but this could be due to the limited nature of the books being prepared for the High School market.  It looks like I am going to need to include research of online portals in my interest for the future.