Canadian Authors Nominated for a Digital Book Award

Star Wars, Disney, Breaking Bad - all past nominees for the Digital Book Awards Now, the first-ever ESL textbook series for the iPad - "Study It" - has been nominated for a DBA to be presented on January 14, 2015 in New York.

The Study It Series was written by Canadians James Rice and Jamie Matechuk for their language school Connect School of Languages in Toronto - the only 1:1 iPad language school in Canada.

"We feel incredibly honoured to be recognized internationally for the Study It textbook series. The ability to use technology to engage and motivate students while opening the door for greater collaboration with teachers is incredibly exciting for us," said Rice. "We are entering a new frontier of publishing that is going to be challenging yet rewarding."

Rice and Matechuk have been working seemingly non-stop for the past two years to create the Study It textbook series. Their school has been an incubator of ideas with the iPad.

"We knew we were on the right path when we invited a rep from Apple Education to see our school and give us some feedback," said Matechuk. "He was overwhelmed. He told us that we were light years ahead of what was happening out there."

Despite the difficulties of both creating and implementing the books, Rice gets great motivation from the students themselves. "They are the ones who tell us to keep going. Even when we make mistakes or we face some challenges, the students are forgiving because they know what we are trying to do."

Another challenge for the school, was bringing teachers up to speed. "We went looking for teachers who had an open-mind to teaching with something new," says Matechuk. "Making them a part both the creative and implementation process was critical to our success. We encouraged feedback and asked for their help because this has never been done before."

Each book is judged based on a 13 point quality assurance test. The judging panel includes leading digital publishing design and production experts. Here is a list of the 2015 judges: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/the-digital-book-awards/judging-panel/

Past winners and nominees of the Digital Book Awards have included: "The Making of Star Wars" by Ballentine, "Decoded" by Jay Z, "Breaking Bad" by Sony Pictures, "Cracking the GRE" by Princeton Review, "The Complete IELTS Student's Book" by Cambridge Press and "Disney Animated" by Disney.

Rice and Matechuk will be attending the Gala Awards ceremony in New York on January 14th.

About Study It
The Study It textbook series was written for for the language school Connect School of Languages - the only 1:1 iPad language school in Canada. The Study It series uses Apple's iBooks Author software and is available for us with iPads, iMacs and MacBooks. Visit the Study It website: www.studyitbooks.com for more information.

James Rice
Connect School of Languages
416-850-8602
info@connectlanguage.com

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