Apple to bring interactive textbooks to the iPad with iBooks 2 (Updated)
Today is Apple's big education event and the company kicked off its announcements with iBooks 2, which will bring a new textbook experience to the iPad. As expected, these textbooks will include standard text interspersed with interactive high-quality images, videos, animations and 3-D models.
This content will be more than pretty; it will provide students with an immersive learning environment. They will be able to pinch to zoom on images, tap on a word and read the glossary entry to find out what they are looking at. It will also include "My Notes" which will let you easily create study cards from a section of the textbook.
The first textbooks made available will be biology and high school science titles from Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. These publishers make up 90 percent of the textbook market. DK Publishing will also launch with several interactive titles for children. Pricing is amazingly competitive with high school textbooks costing $14.99 or less.
The new iBooks 2 should be available for free from the iOS App Store starting later today is now available in the App Store. You can see a sample of what these textbooks will look like via E.O. Wilson's Life On Earth.
