Pearson Plans API Platform to Unlock Content

by Kin Lane on 05/10/2011

Publisher and ed-tech company Pearson announced a new initiative to build an API platform that give developers access to the publisher's content.

Pearson's Plug & Play Platform claims to unlock the company's large content bank which ranges from Dorling Kindersley (DK) Publishing's illustrated guides to Pearson Education textbooks.

The new API platform will allow developers to mash up Pearson content with other content and data to derive entirely to types of web, mobile and tablet products.

Pearson's Future Technologies Group Product Manager, Diana Stepner, says:

We recognise the world has changed and our content needs to be available for innovative uses outside Pearson. Plug & Play opens up opportunities for DK and Pearson to connect with developers who are seeking the rich content we can share.

Pearson will be running initial platform tests using DK's Eyewitness Travel Guide material, then moving on to a wider range of subjects from science and natural history to gardening, parenting and early learning.

While it sounds promising that the world's largest education technology company is opening up its content via an API platform, Pearson doesn't reveal much information about just what this will entail. What sorts of content will developers have access to? What will access cost? How will developers be able to monetize and license their projects that are based on the API?

More details will be forthcoming, as Pearson says the Plug & Play Platform is slated for launch in early 2012.