I followed Macworld’s excellent liveblog coverage of Apple’s ‘Education Announcement’ event this morning. For me, this was one of the most exciting Apple events I’ve ever tuned into. I got more and more excited as the event went on, because I feel like the things that were announced are going to have a massive impact on education and students of all ages – and the iPad’s impact in educational institutions.
I’m still digesting the news and gathering my thoughts, but here’s a quick recap of some of the most interesting announcements:
– Apple, with the collaboration of some blue-chip publishing partners, is setting out to reinvent textbooks on the iPad. There are already over 1.5 million iPads in use in education institutions. Many of them in 1 to 1 programs.
– iBooks 2.0 (updated today and live now in the App Store) is going to make textbooks everything that traditional textbooks cannot be - interactive, fun, gorgeous, engaging, with features like 3D models, interactive elements, multimedia, powerful advanced search, notes, highlighting, definitions, lesson reviews and study cards, and more.
– Apple has partnered with three companies who together account for 90% of the textbooks sold in the US – Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
– There is already a new Textbooks section in iBooks, with 8 high school level titles including Algebra 1, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and more.
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