As a 95-year-old publishing company primarily known for its textbooks, McGraw-Hill is not usually the type of exhibitor one finds at the Consumer Electronics Show, let alone one to make a splash. Nonetheless, the company went to Vegas this year (er, rather its education division, McGraw-Hill Education went to Vegas) to show off some innovative new technology. Again, McGraw-Hill (or textbook publishers in general) not a name one associates with “shiny new technology.” Yet, for some time now, McGraw-Hill Education and its President Brian Kibby have been on a mission to help the company transition from the dying world of print to digital, “augmented learning experiences” — and help create the eBook of the future. At CES, the company debuted “SmartBook,” its latest efforts in this regard: A digital, textbook for computers and tablets that works online and off. Building on the reservoir of student learning data collected from McGraw-Hill’s educational software suite, the digital eBook purports to adapt to the speed and skill-level of its readers. As students progress through its passages and answer questions, the eBook tracks and assesses their activity, adjusting to their individual learning path. It highlights passages and offers voice instruction to walk students through the concepts they need to focus on, turning a static process into something that’s dynamic and personalized. While the debut of its SmartBook showed that McGraw-Hill has recognized how technology is transforming educational publishing and that it’s eager to play a part in the next generation, as is often the case for old world publishers, the technology itself is not entirely its own. Read more »