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Education event: Apple introduced textbooks for the iPad and the iTunes U application

Michal Ždanský
25

Not much was expected from today's lecture. Nevertheless, it brought several interesting things that could set in motion a real revolution in education. The headquarters of digital education should be the iPad.

The first part of the lecture was led by Phil Shiller. The introduction dealt with the importance of the iPad in education and how it could be further deepened. Education in the US is not one of the best in the world, so Apple was looking for a way to make learning more efficient together with teachers, professors and educational institutions. Students mainly lack motivation and interactivity. The iPad could change that.

For students, the App Store has a large number of educational applications. Likewise, many educational books can be found in the iBookstore. However, Shiller sees this as just the beginning, and so Apple decided to revolutionize textbooks, which are the heart of any education system. During the presentation, he showed the advantages of electronic textbooks. Unlike printed ones, they are more portable, interactive, indestructible and easily searchable. However, their work has been difficult so far.

iBooks 2.0

An update to iBooks was introduced, which is now ready to work with interactive books. The new version handles interactive content much better, and it also brings a whole new way of writing notes and creating annotations. To highlight the text, hold and drag your finger, to insert a note, double-tap the word. You can then easily access the overview of all annotations and notes using the button in the top menu. In addition, you can create so-called study cards (flashcards) from them, which will help you remember the individual marked parts.

The interactive glossary is also a big step forward compared to what you will find at the end of each book. Galleries, in-page presentations, animations, search, you can find it all in digital textbooks in iBooks. A great feature is also the possibility of quizzes at the end of each chapter, which are used to practice the material that the student has just read. This way, he gets immediate feedback and doesn't have to ask the teacher for the answers or look for them on the last pages. Digital textbooks will have their own category in the iBookstore, you can easily find them here. However, currently only in the US App Store.

iBooks Author

However, these interactive textbooks must be created. That's why Phil Shiller introduced a new application that you can download for free in the Mac App Store. It's called iBooks Author. The application is largely based on iWork, described by Shiller himself as a combination of Keynote and Pages, and offers a very intuitive and easy way to create and publish textbooks.

In addition to text and images, you also insert interactive elements into the textbook, such as galleries, multimedia, tests, presentations from the Keynote application, interactive images, 3D objects or code in HTML 5 or JavaScript. You move the objects with the mouse so that they are placed according to your wishes - in the simplest way Drag & Drop. The glossary, which can also work with multimedia, is supposed to be revolutionary. While creating a glossary is a chore in the case of a printed book, iBook Author is a breeze.

In the app, you can transfer a book to a connected iPad with one button to see what the result will look like. If you're satisfied, you can export the textbook directly to the iBookstore. Most American publishers have already joined the digital textbook program, and they will offer books for $14,99 and below. We hope that the Czech education system and textbook publishers will not fall asleep and take advantage of the unique opportunity that digital textbooks offer.

To see what such textbooks might look like, two chapters of the new book are available for free download on the US iBookstore Life on Earth created exclusively for iBooks.

[button color=red link=http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks-author/id490152466?mt=12 target=”“]iBooks Author – Free[/button]

iTunes U app

In the second part of the lecture, Eddie Cue took the floor and talked about iTunes U. iTunes U is a part of the iTunes Store that provides free lecture recordings, study podcasts if you will. It's the largest catalog of free study content, with over 700 million lectures downloaded to date.

Here, too, Apple decided to go further and introduced the iTunes U application. The application will serve primarily for a kind of interaction between teachers and students. Here, teachers and professors will have their own sections where they can insert a list of lectures, their content, insert notes, hand out assignments or inform about required reading.

Of course, the application also includes the iTunes U catalog of lectures divided by school. If a student misses an important lecture, he can watch it later through the app – that is, if the cantor recorded and published it. Many American universities and K-12, which is the collective term for elementary and secondary schools, will participate in the iTunes U program. For us, however, this application lacks meaning so far, and I doubt that this will change significantly in the coming years.

[button color=red link=http://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/itunes-u/id490217893?mt=8 target=““]iTunes U – Free[/button]

And that's all from the educational event. Those who expected, for example, the introduction of the new iWork office suite will probably be disappointed. Nothing can be done, maybe next time.

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