Apple Targets Educators Via iBooks 2, iBooks Author, iTunes U App

Apple on Thursday jumped deeper into the education space with the launch of iBooks 2 for textbooks, a custom e-book creation platform dubbed iBooks Author, and an expanded iTunes U app that's also now accessible to K-12 educators.

"Education is deep in Apple's DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet. With 1.5 million iPads already in use in education institutions, including over 1,000 one-to-one deployments, iPad is rapidly being adopted by schools across the US and around the world," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "Now with iBooks 2 for iPad, students have a more dynamic, engaging and truly interactive way to read and learn, using the device they already love."

With iBooks 2, Apple is bringing textbooks to the iPad. Rather than flipping through dog-eared, aging books, swipe through colorful, full-screen images, interactive 3D objects, and videos via iBooks 2. Students can read the book in the traditional, book format or switch to a graphic-enhanced option.

Not sure of a word? Tap it and a glossary will display a definition. To highlight a passage (with different color options), just use your finger, and tap to write a note about it. A toolbar will display all your notes in one section, but iBooks 2 includes a function that will turn these notes into flashcards for easy studying. It will also do the same for glossary terms.

The iBooks 2 app is free and available today in the App Store, and it works for the iPad and iPhone, Apple said. Those who already have the iBooks app installed will get the new functionality via an update.

Apple is teaming up with McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which will offer textbooks via iBooks for $14.99 or less. Inside the App Store's new textbook category, McGraw-Hill and Pearson are now offering algebra, biology, chemistry, geometry, and physics books for U.S. customers; Houghton Mifflin e-textbooks are coming soon.

Selections from DK Publishing and the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation will also be on offer.

Create Your Own E-Books
Major publishers, however, are not the only ones who can create e-textbooks. A new Mac App Store app, iBooks Author, allows educators and smaller publishers to create their own books for inclusion in the iBookstore. That can be a textbook, cookbook, history book, or more.

Text and images can be added by dragging and dropping, while movies, interactive photo galleries, Keynote presentations, and more can be included via Multi-Touch widgets.

The more tech-savvy user can also customize their iBooks Author e-book, Apple said. When you're done, preview the e-book via the iPad.

Apple's iBooks Author is also available today, for free, in the Mac App Store.

iTunes U App
Once you have all this new content, how do you organize it? Apple's iTunes U has been around for some time, with 700 million downloads since its inception, Apple said today. But the tool has primarily been used for lectures; the new iTunes U app expands that functionality.

Students with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch can download the app and access course work, like lectures, assignments, books, quizzes, and syllabi, though some features only work on the iPad. They can also access free educational content from universities like Cambridge, Duke, Harvard, Oxford and Stanford.

Apple also announced plans to expand beyond the college level, offering the iTunes U app to K-12 educators.

"The all-new iTunes U app enables students anywhere to tap into entire courses from the world's most prestigious universities," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. "Never before have educators been able to offer their full courses in such an innovative way, allowing anyone who's interested in a particular topic to learn from anywhere in the world, not just the classroom."

The success of these efforts, of course, depends on how many people have iOS devices. The iPad does not run cheap, starting at $499, while the iPhone and iPod touch will also set you back several hundred dollars. That hasn't hurt sales, of course, with at least 4 million iPhone 4S devices sold at launch. Expect more sales figures during Apple's Jan. 24 earnings call.

Apple for today's education event last week, with about a "Garageband for e-books," something the late Steve Jobs was reportedly working on for months before his October 2011 death.

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