Apple announced a new version of iBooks today with support for interactive textbooks, and a Mac application for authoring them.
Textbooks in iBooks 2 behave like apps and can be updated in the same way. They will be priced at $14.99. UK details have yet to be announced.
Publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson announced that they would deliver titles on the store.
‘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 Phil 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.’
iBooks 2 is available now on the App Store and iBooks Author is free on the Mac App Store.
Apple also announced a new iTunes U app which allows teaching establishments to provide students with the materials they need to take entire courses. These include lectures, assignments, and books. Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford are among the universities taking part.
‘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,’ said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.
