[AppOfMyi] iBooks 2 - The Future of Learning !

Yesterday, Apple held a media event which was focused on education. Apple has been well known for their interest in education, helping challenged children and various discounts for students. But, yesterday iBooks 2 was release which "Re-invents Textbooks" as stated by Apple.

iBooks 2 is the new and highly improved version of the "iBooks" from Apple. iBooks had a number of books for casual reading and reference but with iBooks 2, Apple aims to focus the entire curriculum onto a 9.7 inch screen. Majority of the books are availbale for purchase form the iBooks store and are integrated with various study tools to help the students.

• Multitouch gestures to navigate, much more interesting and interactive than static sheets of paper.
• Pinch to get to table of contents, Easy glossary access and linked index entries.
• Review questions become visual and interactive, and offer immediate feedback.
• Integrated highlighting and note taking.
• Automatically turn notes and highlights into study cards.

According to Apple, textbooks are cumbersome, not portable, not durable, not interactive, not searchable, but the content is great. It is not possible to keep uptodate with the content. With iBooks 2, students can overcome these problems and can keep their books for life.

Apple has made partnerships with McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (90% of all textbook sold in US) so that their books are readily available for purachase in the iBooks store. Books will be available for 14.99$ or less.Apple also released iTunes 10.5.3 with support for syncing the new textbooks.

Along with the release of iBooks 2, Apple released the Mac App called iBooks Author, which helps anybody to write and publish on the iBooks Store. The features include:

• Template chooser sets the stage, and build from there. Drag and drop layout controls.
• Toolbar controls with gallery of available interactive elements. Everything auto-formats into the layout'
• For more custom interaction, drag and drop an entire Keynote presentation right into the layout.
• If you can write code in Javascript and HTML5, you can build your own widgets for embedding in books.
• Preview function to push the book to an iPad for testing.

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