Apple at its Education event announced with digital textbooks for students. These are available for the iPad, and are part of the app iBooks 2. There will also be a tool for e-books.
The digital textbooks have interactive features and the learning more interesting, according to Apple. So make multitouch gestures it is possible to view images in 3d view. In addition, there are features built right in, so with words directly meaning look up and there is a search function available. Writers can in their books, a key installation, in which students are asked to answer questions about the text to answer. In the digital books, it is also possible to have the notes to save.
With the first version of the iBooks app, it was already possible to have books and magazines to buy. With the new application, will there be a separate section for textbooks. It is possible to free a number of pages of a book to see.
For the creation of the textbooks comes Apple with a free tool for e-books. Writers can use it to interactive digital books, which work on the basis of drag-and-drop of media elements such as text, audio, and video. Boekenmakers their creations directly upload to the e-bookwinkel of Apple. In addition, the company from Cupertino, together with publishers of textbooks, such as Pearson and McGraw Hill. Both the tool as iBooks 2 is available immediately.
Further, Apple announced a new iTunes U app. Thus, teachers can digital lectures, which then streamed can be. It is also possible to send messages to students, and digital commands. Also the new iTunes U app, which it already was possible to make educational content to share, is immediately available free of charge.
Previously there were already rumors out about an e-book tool from Apple. The e-books would be based on the epub technology, but Apple showed during the presentation nothing about los. It would go to version 3, which includes support for audio and video. In addition to the recent rumors would Apple already in the autumn of last year had planned to tools for the education to announce. An introduction in October 2011, at the same time with the iPhone 4S, would at the last moment abandoned.
According to Apple, there are currently about 1.5 million iPads used in education. Also there are approximately 20,000 educational applications available for the Apple tablet. The company announced that the books for teaching to be released not will cost more than $ 15 per piece.
