Apple lately launched its entry into digital college textbooks. Apple intends to make the iPad a replacement for a back-pack full of books. Students groaning beneath the weight of multiple textbooks can now swap their hefty volumes for an iPad - if they can afford one.
Major textbook publishers have been making electronic versions of their products for years , but until fairly recently, there has not been any hardware acceptable to display the books. Computers are too pricey and cumbersome to be good ebook machines for students. Dedicated e-book readers like the Kindle have little screens and can't display color. IPads and other tablet PCs work fine, but iPads cost at least $499.
All this means textbooks have lagged the general adoption of etextbooks, even when counting varsity textbooks bought by scholars. Digital textbooks accounted for rather less than 3 percent of the $8 billion U.S. Textbook market in 2010.
The new textbooks from Apple work with a more recent version of the free iBooks application. Apple also made public iBook Author, an application for Macs letting people create electronic textbooks. iBook Textbooks dump the paper-flipping effect of ebooks for a app-like experience, offering images, videos and interactive diagrams alongside the text. Students can also highlight passages and make notes, then touch a button to have them transformed into study cards. Teachers can also utilise the Author app to make iPad-based courses and message students when they set homework.
Two of the major textbook publishers, Pearson and McGraw-Gill , have agreed to provide electronic textbooks to the Apple store to sell. The third major company, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is also looking forward to working with Apple.
Though the idea appears appealing initially, there's been plenty of feedback re the discriminatory nature of this reform on students not possessing iPads of their own. Also , long-term these ebooks would finish up being more expensive for the students.
Major textbook publishers have been making electronic versions of their products for years , but until fairly recently, there has not been any hardware acceptable to display the books. Computers are too pricey and cumbersome to be good ebook machines for students. Dedicated e-book readers like the Kindle have little screens and can't display color. IPads and other tablet PCs work fine, but iPads cost at least $499.
All this means textbooks have lagged the general adoption of etextbooks, even when counting varsity textbooks bought by scholars. Digital textbooks accounted for rather less than 3 percent of the $8 billion U.S. Textbook market in 2010.
The new textbooks from Apple work with a more recent version of the free iBooks application. Apple also made public iBook Author, an application for Macs letting people create electronic textbooks. iBook Textbooks dump the paper-flipping effect of ebooks for a app-like experience, offering images, videos and interactive diagrams alongside the text. Students can also highlight passages and make notes, then touch a button to have them transformed into study cards. Teachers can also utilise the Author app to make iPad-based courses and message students when they set homework.
Two of the major textbook publishers, Pearson and McGraw-Gill , have agreed to provide electronic textbooks to the Apple store to sell. The third major company, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is also looking forward to working with Apple.
Though the idea appears appealing initially, there's been plenty of feedback re the discriminatory nature of this reform on students not possessing iPads of their own. Also , long-term these ebooks would finish up being more expensive for the students.
About the Author:
Bob Jones launched eTextbooksCheaper.com, a site dedicated to helping students find and download textbooks
and show the least expensive price available to download iPad Textbooks.
and show the least expensive price available to download iPad Textbooks.