VANCOUVER, Canada – January 12, 2020 – PressReader, the all-you-can-consume digital newsstand, continues to grow its Group of companies with its expansion into the eLearning market. After two decades in the digital distribution of newspapers and magazines, PressReader forms its Educational Technologies segment with the launch of its eLearning brand TextbookHub and the acquisition of Evident Point Software Corp.
With the acquisition of Evident Point, PressReader gains a company at the forefront of the on-screen reading experience, developing foundational technologies for educators and students to create, distribute, and consume digital content. Its history of digital publishing traces to early uses of PDF, SVG, as well as innovations in format conversion and annotation. Evident Point’s active involvement with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) helped shape the standards that became EPUB. Today, the company continues to contribute to the evolution of EPUB 3, Web Publications standards, and growing its cloud-based eLearning technology.
TextbookHub, PressReader’s flagship educational technologies brand, provides seamless integration with SIS/LMS/SMS systems and supports single sign-on online and offline, in–class or remote learning on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Chrome devices. TextbookHub’s platform and tools allow teachers to overlay the textbook with quizzes, video, links, notes, and more to create a collaborative learning experience for students without changing a publisher’s content. With Evident Point’s acquisition, TextbookHub now has the technology engine that drives innovation and future development.
“Since 2018, we have been investing in the expansion of PressReader Group of companies and our direction into the educational technology space. It’s an expansion that leverages our expertise in worldwide distribution and consumption of reading content to reach an innovative and growing eLearning market,” notes Alex Kroogman, CEO of PressReader Group of companies. “In just two short years, we’ve integrated over 1 million educational materials, bringing them to life with interactive features for students and educators working in the classroom or remote.”
PressReader’s Educational Technologies segment is built with one goal in mind: to deliver materials that simplify the learning process with anywhere, anytime access. As demand shifts, students and educators are less interested in expensive and inflexible materials like print-based texts, moving instead to content that’s readily available and digitally interactive. For students and schools, TextbookHub provides complete turnkey solutions that include all required material. For publishers, it’s a new digital distribution channel for their quality content — delivered directly to a student’s virtual bookshelf, accessible for the duration of the school term.
