Apple plans to reinvent the textbook with iBooks 2 for iPad
Suggesting that textbooks are no longer the ideal learning tool, Apple on Thursday proposed a new method: iBooks 2 for iPad.Speaking to the press at New York"s Guggenheim Museum, Apple executive Phil Schiller said current textbooks are not very portable, they"re not durable, and they"re not interactive. He believes the iPad stacks up better, particularly with the new iBooks 2.
Demonstrating iBooks 2 on Thursday, Apple"s Roger Rosner showed off how iBooks 2 allows texbooks to start off with intro movies. He also quickly went across thumbnails for pages, and could skip across chapters.
Touting the new textbooks as "gorgeous," Rosner argued that "no printed book can compete with this." He demonstrated the ability to pinch into photos, and showcased 3D models of biological structures, all interactive within a digital textbook in iBooks 2.
Titles were shown off in both portrait and landscape mode. When switching to portrait, the digital textbook takes on a simpler look, with smaller pictures on the side and reading the more dominant task.
Rosner"s demonstration utilized a number of multi-touch gestures to interact with the book, like pinch the page to access the table of contents. He also used features like tapping a word to get a definition, or to access a glossary.
Also demonstrated was a new gallery view. Users can swipe to browse the images in a gallery, and tap the screen to make the image go fullscreen.
iBooks 2 also offers chapter summaries, and multiple choice tests with questions and answers. Students are offered immediate feedback on their answers, and teachers are given options for layouts and question types.
iBooks 2 also simplifies note taking, allowing students to swipe over text to highlight. Tapping highlighted text allows students to change the color, while notes can be added to the margin by tapping the note icon.
New textbooks can be purchased from the iBookstore, where screenshots of titles are also available. Free samples remain available, and there"s an option for one-tap purchasing. Titles can be re-downloaded as needed.
iBooks 2 remains a free application, and the new update is now available on the App Store.
Thursday"s presentation included a video in which teachers detailed some of the issues in today"s classroom. One of the largest was student engagement, and the fact that many students aren"t interested in subjects taught in the classroom.
Apple boasted that there are already more than 20,000 education and learning applications available for the iPad on the App STore. They include "The Elements," "Frog Dissection," "Virtual Rome" and "Art Authority." There"s also a great deal of education-related content on the iBookstore.