Kendall Hunt Publishing

This is teacher appreciation week, and somehow it seems that as a mother and an employee of an educational publishing company, I should be and am extremely grateful to our teachers out there.  I just read a great article by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space about how grateful she is to her high school science teacher, and the vital importance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in our educational system today in order for us to remain competitive in the future. You can find the article here: http://mashable.com/2012/05/08/sally-ride-stem-programs-teachers/.

On that page was a link to another article about teachers adjusting to digital learning environments. I’m just interested in what our readers think about things like digital science programs, eLearning, and the variety of content delivery systems now available for educational materials. Do they make your teaching lives easier? Is kids not having computers at home ever a problem? Do you find that you spend less money out of your own pockets when using online course materials? Submit a comment if you have an opinion.

And again, thank you for all you do!!!

We all know that digital content delivery in the form of digital coursepacks and online course materials are finally storming the college publishing world, including the Kendall Hunt world of custom college publishing. But how do students want to get this content? According to a recent article on mashable.com (you can find it here: http://mashable.com/2012/01/06/tablet-publishing-education/) they want it to be available on their tablets. That’s because 86% of tablet-owning students in a recent survey said the tablet helps them study more efficiently, and 76% said they perform better in class as a result. Pretty impressive figures, no?

But what’s the reality? Well, we’ve always known that interactive learning boosts retention. We know that from our experience with inquiry based science products. But now we’re finding out that digital learning environments take students who were usually passive learners and turn them into active learners. And when you can carry everything you need to learn about your school subjects on a small, thin, tablet…wow, I wish I’d had that in college, it would have made studying so much easier in any location. Today’s college students are the first real digital generation, a generation whose learning environments can take them all over the world. Makes me wonder, where will they take our world?

How do you like to learn? Do you want everything on a tablet? In one place? Would you study more or better if that's how your learning materials came to you?

More than ever college professors recognize the importance of getting first year students off to a good start. Not only does it set them up for success in college, but it vastly improves a school’s retention rate.

For the past couple of years, each spring and fall, higher education publisher Kendall Hunt has offered the Promoting First-Year Student Success in College and Beyond Symposium. The dates for the upcoming seminar at the end of March have just been announced. The Symposium will take place March 30 – April 1 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Atlanta Buckhead in Atlanta, Georgia.

Beside the fact that it should be a beautiful time of year to be in Atlanta, this professional development symposium features leading educators in the field of college student success and diversity education. It will address the full range of factors that promote college student success, focusing on high-impact practices that are well grounded in research on student learning and persistence, and which educate the student as a whole person.

You'll also be able to explore Kendall Hunt's custom college publishing, online course materials, and content delivery system options for your customized first-year title.

Visit the Symposium website at http://www.thrivingincollege.com for more information. Register by February 20^th and save $25 per person. Watch for more posts with info on the sessions and authors. Don’t miss this outstanding event!

If you haven't checked out our new eCatalog, now's a perfect time to start.  This year's catalog is more interactive than ever before, and is packed full of useful information about Kendall Hunt's growing roster of hands-on, standards- and inquiry-based curriculum for grades PreK-12.

Want to learn more about our K-12 ebooks for math and science? Just look for the free trial button throughout the catalog and click on it to get access to Flourish, our digital learning network. Looking for a middle grades math program that's rich with interactive whiteboard activities and games? Our Math Innovations section provides links that allow you to try them for yourself directly from the catalog page. And the BSCS Biology: A Human Approach and Forensic Science for High School catalog pages allow you to experience multimedia features like video, audio in English and Spanish, and virtual autopsies.

You can also find information about our newly-acquired Discovering Mathematics programs and the ways they align to the Common Core State Standards. It's easy to sign up for a free 30-day preview with a simple click of your mouse.  

But that's not all! Learn about our variety of online professional development programs along with our live and interactive Inside Look Webinar Series, which are led by Kendall Hunt curriculum experts and provide in-depth information about our programs.

To begin exploring the catalog, click here.

On August 1, Kendall Hunt Publishing Company added to its roster of inquiry- and standards-based mathematics programs with the purchase of six high school mathematics programs from Key Curriculum Press. This means that we can now offer a comprehensive selection of high-quality, hands-on math curricula from PreK to grade 12!

Adding high school mathematics curricula to the company's bookbag has been a major goal for Kendall Hunt, but finding the right programs was challenging. K-12 division vice president Charley Cook explains that "the high school curricula needed to be a good fit with our inquiry- and standards-based curricula at the elementary and middle grade levels. The new programs from Key match well with both and represent a logical progression of Kendall Hunt’s PreK-12 publishing philosophy.”

The newly-acquired high school math programs are:

·         Discovering Algebra
·         Discovering Geometry
·         Discovering Advanced Algebra
·         Precalculus with Trigonometry
·         Calculus
·         Statistics in Action

The first three programs are part of the Discovering Mathematics series and are fully aligned to the Common Core State Standards. The remaining programs are part of the Advanced Mathematics series, which helps prepare students for Advanced Placement exams and the study of college mathematics.

Kendall Hunt's future plans include working with each curriculum's author teams to transform the texts into fully interactive, digital mathematics programs available in Flourish, the Kendall Hunt digital learning network.

As you can imagine, bringing six new programs to Kendall Hunt involves a lot of work behind the scenes, so the next 30 days will be a transition period for us. In the meantime, you can click on the above links to learn more about these new programs for grades 9-12.  And be sure to visit here often to get up-to-the-minute information about how to bring them to your classroom!

So, what do you do if you teach a unique higher education course and you can’t find the perfect book to fit your needs? You create your own custom college textbook.

That is what education professors at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa did.  They teach a Human Relations course, which seems basic enough, except they took it one step further for their education students.  They teach their Human Relations course specifically for educators.  Since educators face different human relations situations than persons in other careers, they wrote their book to prepare pre-service teachers for those situations. Congratulations  to Scott Arnett, Susan Burns, and Susie Lubbers on their publication Human Relations for the Educator.

With the opportunities available in custom publishing, you can create a traditional printed textbook, lab manual, digital course pack, college ebook or a combination of any of them.

Discover your Create... Customize ... Adopt solutions at www.kendallhunt.com/highered.

As the days get longer and the weather warms up, I can’t help but think about cold treats. There’s an ice cream store in my hometown of Dubuque, Iowa that is called Cold Stone Creamery.  I’m sure you are probably familiar with this business concept.  The customer walks in, looks at a large sample of ice cream flavors (ranging from vanilla to cookie batter, to banana) and numerous mix-ins (such as Oreo, Snickers, brownie, or Cookie Dough). 

Now the customer can do one of three things when they enter: they can order an existing creation directly from the menu; use the menu as a template and add their own mix-ins; or create their own treat from scratch.

This concept dovetails perfectly to my work at Kendall Hunt Publishing.  As a leading higher education textbook publisher, we allow professors to create, adopt, or customize a variety of our college textbooks and ebooks.

Like my father-in-law orders his ice cream treats directly from the menu, so to can a professor adopt a textbook directly from our online college textbooks catalog.  This serves him well.  He gets a tested and proven ice cream treat – similar to a professor getting a classroom tested textbook.

Or you could be like my wife and use the menu at Cold Stone as a guide.  She looks up a certain ice cream flavor and consults a list of recommendations to meet her palate.   Her favorite is the cake batter ice cream with the cookie dough mix-in.  This is very similar to Kendall Hunt’s customization process.  Professors can meet with one of our educational consultants, discuss their higher education course, and discuss their options.  They can adopt an existing book and add their own content to create a digital course pack; they could consult our digital learning center to see some of our existing material to add, or they could create a new digital coursepack and deliver via our content delivery system.  The possibilities are truly endless!

Finally, the customer can walk into this ice cream store and invent their own ice cream creation.  This is how I like to roll.  Throw a little bit of this, little bit of that, and bam, a new creation!  As always, Kendall Hunt Publishing offers the educator to create their own course content to meet the needs of them and their students.  Professors can create their own college ebooks, college textbooks, or digital coursepacks. This is the principle that Kendall Hunt was based on and has followed for over sixty years…

All this talk about ice cream is making me hungry…..Thank heavens that Kendall Hunt Publishing offers online content delivery so I can work on the run….I’m off to the ice cream store!

We spend a great deal of time here on the KH blog talking about our outstanding PreK-12 curricula. But there’s a whole other side to our business that I’d like to share with you:  our custom publishing for higher education. No, not vanity press, but true custom publishing. We’ve been doing this longer and better than anyone else. Ever have a professor in one of your higher education courses who gave you the book list, but then supplemented with all kinds of material and research of his own? Those are the professors who have discovered the value of custom publishing with KH.

We got started in the business back in 1944, when our founder, William C. Brown, bought the rights to 26 workbooks and lab manuals written and used by Midwestern professors. These titles, therefore, had guaranteed sales in those authors’ schools.  Kendall Hunt’s story is unique in today’s publishing industry full of mergers and acquisitions. You can read the rest of our story here.

Today, our Higher Education division offers you the opportunity to custom publish a title for your class with all your own, original material. Or, you can use some of your material, and some of the vast library of material Kendall Hunt has available to custom publish one of our existing titles for your specific school and course. You can use digital content delivery exclusively, or you can combine a traditional textbook with online course materials to create a hybrid product that will work for the digital generation as well as returning students. Check out our custom publishing options and solutions today!

Are you going? Kendall Hunt will be there! The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) National Conference takes place in San Francisco March 9-12. The Kendall Hunt booth is number 1729, so be sure to stop by. You also won't want to miss our two workshops, one on BSCS Biology: A Human Approach, and one on our exciting new digital learning environment, Flourish.  You can find more information about those here.

Flourish will be in the spotlight, along with the four high school science programs, BSCS Biology: A Human Approach, Forensic Science for High School, Global Science, and KH Chemistry that are currently available in Flourish. Flourish is home to an ever-growing list of online course materials and digital learning resources and at NSTA you’ll see how affordable these products are when purchased digitally either as a complete curriculum, eChapters, or eUnits. When you visit our booth, you can sign up for a free trial of the program of your choice, and everyone who registers will be entered in a daily drawing to win a free classroom license for Global Science, Forensics or A Human Approach!

If you are unable to attend NSTA, we’ll miss you, but you can sign up for a free trial of Flourish at http://www.kendallhunt.com/freeflourishtrial. You’ll also find the same product-specific information we’ll be sharing in the booth through our free Inside Look  Webinar  series.

NSTA is always an exciting week. We get to visit with so many of the teachers using our science programs and share our programs for the first time with many others. Not to mention, of course, that the Moscone Convention Center is in the heart of fabulous San Francisco. We hope to see you there, so don’t forget to visit us at booth 1729!