One of the main ambitions behind the new site is to reach-out beyond our traditional developer and tech community, and engage with those creators and collaborators who will be as key to helping us build the next generation of digital solutions.

For that reason the new website has been designed with simplicity at its core. We wanted the website to appeal to, and be used by, developers and programmers, of course; but also by anyone with an interest in thinking about how Pearson’s vast library of content can help solve the challenges of the day.

Significant improvements include the use of documentation tool Swagger, meaning APIs are now arranged in an attractive tile-like format, with the option to drill down by publisher. The site includes content from all parts of Pearson  – education, including Longman; the Penguin Group, including DK; and the Financial Times.

In addition, visitors to the site can get instant inspiration from the ‘Showcase’, a section allowing anyone to explore examples of Pearson’s APIs in action.

The new site has been created by Pearson’s Future Technologies team, headed up by Diana Stepner. She explains the vision.

“I am delighted with our new developer site. The purpose of the re-launch was to better represent what we actually do here at Pearson. By making it even easier for developers to access our APIs, we are entering a new and exciting chapter for Pearson. Developer communities, especially in the ed-tech market, are set for phenomenal growth, and we believe Pearson’s APIs are going to play a key role.”

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Keep in touch with Pearson’s Developer team on Twitter.

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In my last blog post on our corporate site I talked about how Pearson recognises that we can no longer be truly successful by keeping our data and content fenced in, and we can’t tackle the biggest problems in education alone.

(photo - MIT Media Lab : Copyright Andy Ryan)

Organisations, governments and companies around the world are prying open their doors in order to better engage with audiences and fuel innovation by tapping into external resources. That’s because they, like Pearson, know that the only way to keep pace in an increasingly dynamic digital landscape is to challenge traditional models for developing new ideas.

Pearson has many gifted creators but no single company has a monopoly on talent. We have the opportunity to develop even more innovative products and services if we draw on great minds outside the company as well. Having the right collaborators is crucial to this and that’s why I am delighted that Pearson has agreed to be a corporate member of the MIT Media Lab, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Founded in 1985, the MIT Media Lab seeks to go beyond well-trod boundaries to design new technologies that allow people to create a better future – be it through science, architecture, music or ecology. The Financial Times’s science editor, Clive Cookson, recently did a terrific feature story for the FT Weekend Magazine that really brings it to life.

Pearson is delighted to work with the MIT Media Lab to find new approaches to education. If there is one area that by definition draws on all others, it is education, so we are looking forward to engaging with the great thinkers at the MIT Media Lab.

Together we hope to explore such areas as lifelong learning, literacy, and 21st century skills. Other possible topics include how learning spaces could be improved to support innovation, and how to make learning as attention grabbing as a game.

Pearson also looks forward to undertaking projects and research that may have never occurred to us before, drawing on the creative brainpower swirling around the Media Lab and opportunities raised with other MIT Media Lab collaborators.

Pearson has long admired the MIT Media Lab, and we were honoured to welcome Lab director Joi Ito to a Pearson management meeting in Boston last year. Interviewed there by Pearson’s Chief Information Officer Genevieve Shore, Joi urged Pearson to be more open in its business, to listen to people from all walks of life, and to connect more deeply with them.

Pearson expects our new collaboration with the MIT Media Lab will advance his sound advice.

Our chief digital officer Juan Lopez-Valcarcel will be speaking in London at EdTech Europe (#edtecheurope), helping to explore the trends shaping the global edtech industry, and how businesses are having to adapt to grasp the opportunities.

On the other side of the pond, Julie Bai (one third teacher, one third developer, one third tech evangelist) will be in San Francisco at HACKtivatED (#hacktivated), an event to connect the Bay Area tech community with local education organisations with a common objective of tackling important, immediate challenges in K-12 education. The hack will test participants tech skills, but also their ability to apply entrepreneurial thinking and technology to the edtech market. Hackers will be able to build relationships with their potential customers, as well as an opportunity to beta test their creation with a real user group that has a vested interest in their solution.

Gregg Albert, part of our Developer Relations team in the US, explains why today’s events are so important for Pearson.

“In my opinion, this is just what we need to make a real impact with technology in education: educators and other professionals working within schools truly understand the issues. Technologists and entrepreneurs have the ability to execute, but it is imperative to bring these groups together to solve the right problems with modern solutions.”

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We’ll be tweeting from both events, so join in.
@PearsonLabs | Juan Lopez-Valcarcel | Julie Bai

During their Hack Reactor time, our scholars will get the chance to create an app with our APIs, followed up with a profile piece on their handiwork on our Plug and Play site, developer.pearson.com. Look out, they might even feature on our hallowed pages, if they’re very lucky. We’ll look forward to seeing what they get up to.

Gesture controlled public info-kiosks, a weekly calorie counting recipe planner, and a contextual language learning tool, were just some of the creations on show as the second Pan-Pearson Hackathon drew to a close on Friday. Wizards from all areas of Pearson, including the FT, Fronter, Penguin and DK, got cracking on the hacking over two intensive days that demonstrated the best of collaboration and creativity across the business.

Armed with access to Pearson’s APIs, an inventive mind and enough sugar to sink a liner, developer teams in the UK, US, India, Sri Lanka, Australia and Norway battled it out for local victory in the quest for a place at Pearson’s Tech Summit in San Francisco in November. As well as individual team glory (and potential air-miles) the two days connected the international developer community and helped to shine a light on exciting new ideas and concepts that could be developed further.

Pearson’s English language teaching, travel and cookery APIs proved some of the most popular with hacking teams, with new technologies, such as Leap Motion, a big winner too.

Well done everyone – next stop San Fran

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You can learn more about everything going on with Pearson’s developer community at developer.pearson.com.

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The Javascript-focused conference is a community driven non-profit event for everyone who loves developing applications and services using web technology. Box ticked. The Fronter learning platform is a web application and like all others makes use of Javascript. We had the opportunity to share some of our thoughts, and also learn some new tricks which we’ll be using to improve Fronter.

Addy Osmani gave us some great tips on how to improve tablet scrolling, with better rendering and performance, all important for our mobile first strategy.

Jan Lehnardt’s look at freeing front end developers from the shackles of back end technology and the offline world was a real eye-opener; his call to build better, more enjoyable, more functional and more mobile friendly user experiences struck a chord with Fronter’s team of front end developers.

Because Fronter is always striving for the safest web browsing experience possible for our teachers, pupils and parents, we were very keen to hear Dr Mario Heiderich‘s insights into how much browser manufacturers have to do to be secure. He gave live coding examples of attacks on IE and talked through preventative measures developers can take.

But it wasn’t all sitting at the back and listening. Some of the Fronter developers rolled up their sleeves and took part in the Firefox OS App Day, where we had the opportunity to work with key contributors to the new, open source, standards based operating system. They took us through the workflow of developing Html5 applications for the Firefox ecosystem, and we even got to break and rebuild the phone operating system – rebels indeed.

New mobile phones were awarded to participants who asked the best questions. Being in the edtech industry, we know how to ask great questions, and now have the phones to prove it. Overall the conference was a ringing success. Sorry!

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Our man in Oslo was David Cameron from the Fronter team. Keep up to date with all the goings on at Fronter via their Twitter feed.