Development Tools

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Adds New Developer Portal

• By Leila Meyer
• 05/21/15

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has launched the HMH Developer Portal, a new online interface where developers, designers and educators can access the company's newly exposed application programming interfaces (APIs) to create new learning applications and integrate them with HMH applications.

This is the first time the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's APIs have been available to developers outside the company. "By exposing our APIs, our goal is to provide greater opportunities for interoperability and ultimately an elegant, streamlined user experience for our customers," said Brook Colangelo, chief technology officer at HMH. "And by connecting to the HMH ecosystem, developers can ensure that their solutions work with those that educators already know and trust.”

The portal was created by HMH Labs, an incubator created by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2014 to foster experimentation and rapid prototyping of new technology solutions. HMH's Identity, Assignment and Document resources are currently available through the API, and the company will expose additional resources throughout 2015. Developers can sign up for an account on the portal and they will be notified as new resources become available.

To mark the launch of the developer portal, HMH is holding a 24-hour developer challenge called Curious Codefest. The event will encourage developers to invent solutions to help students, teachers and parents. Suggested topics for consideration include tools for tracking attendance and homework assignments, fostering interactive and personalized learning or improving communication between school and home. The event will take place on June 27-28, 2015 in Boston, MA. The winner will receive $4,000 cash, and other prizes will also be awarded to runners-up.