Apple made a much anticipated announcement about their digital book offering yesterday. The launch of iBooks 2, involving three new key components: Textbooks, iBooks Author and iTunes U.
The iBook Textbooks promise to be dynamic, engaging and truly interactive. McGraw-Hill and Pearson are already on board and have textbooks ready for this platform.
iBooks textbooks from Apple
iBooks Author is a free tool which will allow anyone to use various ‘drag and drop’ tools to create iBook Textbooks on a Mac platform. If this works it could quickly change the game for smaller learning institutions developing their own courses, and put pressure on the larger academic publishers not ready for this shift.
The iTunes U app gives iOS users access to the world’s largest catalog of free educational content from top universities including Cambridge, Duke, Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, and starting today any K-12 school district can offer full courses through the iTunes U app. The all-new iTunes U app lets teachers create and manage courses including essential components such as lectures, assignments, books, quizzes and syllabuses and offer them to millions of iOS users around the world.
