Apple Hopes Its New iPad Textbooks Can Profoundly Change The Classroom
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Our educational system and possibly the very way teachers teach and students learn may forever change, if Apple has its way with its new eTextbooks for the iPad. NY1's Technology reporter Adam Balkin filed the following report. If you believe, based on recent history, that everything Apple touches turns to gold, then students are about to be surrounded by treasure. The tech giant just made a handful of announcements regarding education. Among them are a new iBooks 2 store with a special section specifically for textbooks souped for the iPad.
"These are beautiful books, interactive, gorgeous, fun, engaging," says Phil Schiller of Apple.
To help boost the content of that new textbook tab of the iBooks store, Apple also unveiled iBooks Author, a powerful tool for Mac computer users to easily create interactive eBooks whether they have hardcore programming skills or not.
"You start simply with beautiful, customizable templates. Without any programming at all you can create multi-touch widgets and interactive experiences," says Schiller.
An updated app for iTunes U now allows teachers from kindergarten through graduate school to create entire curriculums online through the iPad app. Homework can be assigned through there, notes and content can be posted, and just about all classroom tasks can be accomplished with an iPad.
Some teachers and professors say among the potential benefits of these new eTextbooks is that is could help reverse the trend of American students falling behind in subjects like reading, math and science.
Harvard professor and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist E.O. Wilson is excited at the possibilities.
"I've been teaching at Harvard for 41 years and I just wish I was starting now," Wilson says.
He says the technology can draw adults and children into the content and make them want to study more.
"They can go on a journey of learning any time. They're going to see education, I believe, much more easily. In fact compellingly, as an adventure, fun," says Wilson.
Incidentally, all of the new products — iBooks 2, the textbook store, Author and the new iTunesU App — are all available immediately for free.