Macmillan signing brings six of the best
May 19, 2015
As the transition of schools into the online environment continues apace, the creators of digital textbook app LearningField have signed major educational publisher Macmillan Education Australia to provide its catalogue of texts for students in years 7-12.
Signing Macmillan Education means the digital platform has all six of the major Australian educational publishers within LearningField, providing teachers with even greater choice in the classroom.
LearningField has also secured Insight Publications’ catalogue, bringing the total number of publishers to nine.
LearningField has been operating in NSW, Victorian and Tasmanian secondary schools since the beginning of the year to extremely positive feedback. It allows schools to use multiple texts per subject for a single subscription fee.
Director of LearningField, Copyright Agency’s Ben Heuston, says the two new signings mean LearningField’s digital textbook offering will be an even better resource for schools in 2015.
“The feedback we have had from schools is that LearningField allows teachers to set texts and assignments for students of different ability levels. Adding Macmillan’s and Insight’s impressive catalogues to our existing books from seven publishers is really great news for schools.”
St Patrick’s College in Ballarat is one of the schools which has been using LearningField for Year 7-10 students since Term 1. Deputy Headmaster of Teaching and Learning, Stephen Hill, said the school spent some time researching their transition to the online environment.
“Perhaps the biggest strength of LearningField is that it has been able to draw resources from a variety of publishers to be able to meet the text-based needs of a variety of disciplines and a variety of subjects, in a way that others can’t do,” Mr Hill says.
Mr Hill also says LearningField is practical – it cuts down on the number of books students have to carry, making bags lighter, reduces the incidence of lost books and having to remember multiple logins.
Year 8 coordinator Jamie Lynn says, “The students are becoming better organised with their equipment. They definitely take better care of an ipad than they do of a textbook. The boys are engaged with their own learning and they are looking for that knowledge.”
LearningField was recently cited as an example of global industry innovation in PwC’s 13th annual Australian Entertainment & Media Outlook, delivering unbundled book content through an eReader app which can be tailored to the differing learning needs of students within the same class.
Macmillan Education Australia Managing Director, Peter Saffin, said, “Joining LearningField allows us to continue to offer our highly desired content to those schools that use LearningField as their core content delivery system. Working with LearningField, which offers an easy-to-use solution that meets school needs, will strengthen our ability to deliver to the market in future.”
Mr Heuston adds, “We have a mission to give textbook publishers of all sizes and specialities a presence within LearningField, and this new development is a great example of that.”
About LearningField
LearningField, a world-first in educational publishing, combines the textbook resources of publishers Cambridge University Press, Pearson, Oxford University Press, Cengage Learning, Macmillan Education, Helleman Books, Insight Publications and PCS Publications, in a subscription offer for secondary students. It was trialled in numerous schools last year and adopted by schools in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania this year.