Apple launches three new products for education

Apple launches three new products for education

Apple recently launched three new products designed  for educational use, the new products let students and teachers alike use the touch screen interface on iPads to read, write, plan classes and interact with each other. This is a move by Apple to refashion the educational scene which is centered to its best-selling device, the iPad computer tablet.

First of all, a free application known as iBooks where authors can ask virtually anyone to write interactive text books. In a demo made by Apple, an e-book is created in only five minutes.

Another application identified as iTunes U enables teachers plan their lessons and communicate with their students using iPad.

‘The iTunes U apps is free and was reported to help anybody, anywhere to take courses for free,’ claimed Schiller, a senior marketing vice president from Apple.

“If you’re an educator at a university, college, or K-12 school, now you have an easy way to design and distribute complete courses featuring audio, video, books, and other content,” according to a remark from Apple’s website recently.. “And students and lifelong learners can experience your courses for free through a powerful new app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.”

Finally, a news textbook store called iBooks 2 is also introduced. It is a free apps and will be featuring the ebook for schools. Apple claimed to have partnered with texbook companies such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Hiughton Mifflin Harcourt. These companies will be producing the e-book for the store.

In another demo made by an Apple employee, Roger Rosner, demostrated how a student can zoom on cells, do dissection on digital frogs and make notes or highlighting some important points in the e-book.”I don’t think there’s ever been a textbook that made it this easy to be a good student,” Rosner said.

These moves by Apple are certainly aimed at remaking the textbook industry. The company is said to have wooed schools to persuade them to use the iPad. In a press statement, Schiller mocks the traditional textbooks, “They’re not portable, not durable, not interactive, not searchable.” Books on the iPad are all of those things, he said, according to live blogs covering the event.

Based on feedbacks, some educators were excited about the changes, “Apple has recognized that learning for students is not a one-way street,” Jed Macosko, an associate professor at Wake Forest University, said in a statement.

Nonetheless, some were more skeptical, saying that the move could give Apple too much control over educational content.

This is interesting, at least something about education is changing. I am particularly interested in the zooming of details and the dissecting of digital frogs, at least no live frogs is going to be killed for the purpose of education.

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Uploaded by davomrmac on Jan 19, 2012

Apple launches three new products for education