Apple announces iBooks 2, iBooks Author to "reinvent textbooks"
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is an adaptive AI tutor. To realize TYLIP, hard AI problems will need to be solved. Yet, it is possible the iPad 3/iBooks 2 is a step towards a simpler Primer.
"TYLIP is...a book that is powered by a computer so advanced it’s almost magical, and it teaches children everything. It does this through a fully interactive story. It teaches you how to read, how to do maths, it teaches you morals, ethics, even self-defense."
http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-prime...
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cU8NFy0sa_Y/TuWAj8ZBMVI/AAAAAAAABl...
While strong AI would be nice, well crafted content alone could take one very far. Then add in what Khan Academy is doing for tracking learning and you might be 90% there.
I got a Kindle Fire, and reading on it is just not the same as with the 'real' Kindles - you always have 'other things' like email and Facebook lurking just a few clicks away. And the battery life is something you have to keep in mind, and of course an LCD screen just isn't as nice for reading.
Combine automatic text generation (a long-time research topic) with some other existing tech and we could be 90% to the primer.
However, I could see a Watson like search engine being a possible alternative. The child could carry around a monitoring device that would seed the search with the events of the child's day. If the child struggles in class, gets beat up by a bully, etc. the engine could then set programming from an existing library of stories, movies, etc. that is immediately relevant to what the child is experiencing. Entertainment for children is often designed to teach lessons. This would just time the lessons to have maximum impact. Teaching children is a bit like training dogs in that timing is massively important. Catch a dog in the act of peeing on the rug and you can have a far greater impact than if you don't notice the mess until after it's dried!
AI cannot presently compete with humans when it comes to content generation, but the above device could be with a child night and day throughout their schooling, which is something few, if any, parents can do.
First, this brings a focused, clear path for educational content on the iPad. By opening the Books marketplace to more rich multimedia applications, Apple has made it possible for many of the dreams of interactive learning advocates to go mainstream. Imagine learning math by interacting with functions directly or doing symbolic manipulation directly. Or learning to code by actually doing it alongside a narrative. It's hard to imagine an area of study that would not benefit from creative use of technology in teaching it. (No, just adding videos and audio is not enough.)
Second, it opens the door to getting iPads in every classroom. By making it so there is a clear incentive for schools to buy iPads for all their students (cheaper, more useful textbooks) you get an iPad in the hands of every child. It goes without saying this is a big deal.
Finally, it opens the door for real competition for textbooks. By capping the price of textbooks at $15.00, students can easily decide to have several different treatments of the same topic on their iPad. If you manage to create content that is more clear, enjoyable, or even correct, parents and students will be one tap away from getting access to it, cheaply, if their officially-sanctioned book is not doing the job. This turns traditional textbook publishing on its head, because it empowers parents to overturn the textbook choices their school makes from the bottom up. If the entire math class has switched over to using an alternative textbook to learn a topic (just through word of mouth), this might tip the scales so the best content ends up being adopted by schools. Creative, upcoming authors will find that usurping the mainstream textbooks is now possible. I can imagine maverick publishers basically taking the same table of contents from a mainstream textbook and modernizing the treatment of the topic, so students have an easy way to move forward in their class at the same pace but with a much better learning tool.
And this is just what is on the top of my head, before forward thinking content creators have gotten their hands on this new platform.
Will this result in each "chapter" being $15 eventually? Will this favor the rich student over the poor one in terms of coverage (underfunded school wants basic book that covers entire course, but marketplace offers much better books that are more surgical in coverage - rich kid gets better content while poor kid does not).
Back to the subject: I expect prices will rise to whatever the market accepts.
On the one hand, that may be less than what it currently accepts, because a) people expect lower prices for non-physical goods and b) there may be more competition.
On the other hand, production prices for 'books' might increase by orders of magnitude if publishers insert lots of interactive stuff (but I guess many textbooks already ship with CDs or URLs, so that effect may not be that large)
[1]: http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/19/2718357/apple-ibooks-2-tex...
While fancy galleries, embedded videos and the such are quite nice, I would dare to suppose that they are not exactly novelties in the ebook field. I might be austere, but Apple-style animations seem toyish, distracting and out-of-place. "Dynamically updated data" seems to be only pushable to Dashcode HTML widgets, which might be lacking in flexibility (but I might be wrong). There does not seem to be a framework for mathematical interactions that could aid comprehension, for example, nor one for on-the-fly manipulation of text structure that allows the student to fold blocks/etc., e.g. to focus on a particular paragraph/conceptual element.
Briefly stated: is Apple's "reinvention" merely reduced to a basic authoring tool and a branded store, which can tangentially (but importantly) channel external efforts in the sector?
It also means that generating different versions of text books (Texas vs. rest of the US) might make a lot more sense.
What I am challenging is not the overall value of the initiative (through market effects such as competition), but its technological side: given our parent post's first paragraph, what is Apple's contribution to the current e-textbook toolset? Digital textbooks offer much potential for improving certain kinds of cognitive tasks in both sciences and humanities — the former being exemplified by gfodor. However, from this standpoint, I do not see a significant step forward; rather, I see the promulgation of what are mostly "vanity" features that offer limited additional value for study and learning over traditional tools, and which are often styled with a certain kind of eyecandy that I personally find distracting and detrimental in productive contexts.
If most/all schools adopt this and require it, and the books are DRM hindered to a proprietary platform, then that means that it will become a defacto requirement for every student to own an Apple device, in order to receive education.
It may work, and would certainly be good for Apple... but I don't like it.
The DRM would also be added by the ibookstore, so you should be able to get a non-DRM'd ebook out of the author application thing: a commenter noted he'd exported an ibook, changed the extension and had no trouble loading it into a non-apple ebook reader (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3485150)
But one article mentioned that students could not resell the books - which implies DRM.
Outside of high school and into college, the publishers obviously want to prevent reselling/sharing of the books.
You couldn't really sell them either if they weren't DRM'd: who'd buy a C-c C-v for a used "digital book"?
DRM could actually enable resale (or some sort of renting), if the DRM schemes supported it: buying a DRM'd book for $15 gives you a license to its content, reselling to the publisher revokes your license and lets you get some money back, and you can transfer the license to an other owner for a subset of the original price (with the publisher taking a cut of the trade for incentive).
Let's say a textbook is $15, you could resell it to the publisher for $7, or "trade" it for say $9 (with the publisher taking $1 or $2 on top).
Now here comes the rub: what's in it for for-profit publishers, especially publicly owned ones? Nothing, instead of selling two licenses they've now sold half a license, or a license and a fraction of one. Why would they bother unless they're forced to?
I'd rather have better-priced ebooks to start with.
> which keeps me buying physical books
Only works if 1. you want to resell them (I've yet to re-sell one of my books, couldn't care less about resale value) and 2. you lose less by reselling it than the price of the ebook (pretty likely considering you can often get the bloody physical book for less than the ebook in the first place).
It isn't a bash against Apple - I would have the same concerns if it was Amazon or Google, if there was DRM and/or device lock-in.
And I think ebooks could be very good for students - however, limiting it with DRM and device lock-in is not how it should be done.
Anyway, now that iPads are usable without iTunes or a computer at all, I don't see how iTunes is relevant.
As opposed to making one physical textbook mandatory to read a textbook?
DRM locked in ebook is much worse. You are forced to get iTunes/Apple device to access it.
First day of class, you show up. You get your textbook from the teacher. You take it home. You put a cover on it. You use that textbook all year. At the end you turn it in.
I assure you few K-12 students have ever given a crap about having the freedom to buy a copy of their own from a different source rather than using the one handed out by the teacher.
Or go to the library and check one out (some schools in my area are already allowing this with laptops and iPads), or borrow your friend's.
When I went to college, the text books were a proprietary system with built in DRM.
The professors and the text publishers had deals, involving kickbacks I'm sure, and professors were known to demand that you used the current Edition (which was really no better, and often worse than the previous).
They enforced this by asking questions that involved answers that were different in different editions or that weren't covered in previous editions.
Further, all the books had physical DRM. The glue they were bound with and the cardboard the covers was made out of was designed to disintegrate over the course of a semester, even with good care. I kept my books on a shelf next to my desk in my dorm and never took them to class, and still couldn't sell them at the end of the semester because they'd fallen apart.
Once again, Apple's taking a proprietary industry that is used to charging high prices and trying to democratize it and bring prices down.
Apple did this successfully with the music industry before getting them to give up on DRM.
This is a good forward step with the textbook industry.
Plus by definition if you create software which supports new features you have lock-in.
Apple supports the ePub 2 standard. Apple is as interoperable as they can be. Its amazon that created a proprietary ebook standard. Apple's evolving the standard forward, but I've not seen anything to indicate that these aren't just ePub 3 books.
That is not DRM. That is shoddy craftsmanship, poor quality, etc. But it is not DRM. DRM specifically limits your rights - Digital Rights Management - with regard to the content.
Plus by definition if you create software which supports new features you have lock-in.
Not necessarily, if it is an open standard - and if it is an open ePub 3 standard, then that is great. However, if it is DRM inhibited, then it is enforced lock-in. However, interoperability is key, so it needs to be both an open platform, and DRM-free. And it would be disingenuous to argue that the book format is an open standard, if it has non-open DRM locking it down. The DRM becomes part of the book, and cannot be separated from the standard, at that point.
I am not arguing that the college textbook industry does not need reform, or is not prohibitively expensive. It does, and it is. I am arguing against DRM in textbooks, and device lock-in.
That is not DRM. That is shoddy craftsmanship, poor quality, etc.
iPad 3 499
iPad 2 399
Refurbed iPad 1 $99-$299
I don't see them firing up iPad 1 production in order to hit the $299 price point, but I can see them keeping the iPad 2 around at $299 when the iPad 4 hits, similar to the current 3GS/4/4S phone lineup. The economies of scale of extending a year-long manufacturing cycle to three years is too great to be ignored and it gives Apple the added benefit of being able to hit lower prices without sacrificing the quality of their product.
If you make a killer textbook in the new iBook Author tool, you can't publish it for the Kindle Fire. Contrast that to ePub, a file you could deliver to B&N, Apple, Amazon (they require some weird conversion process), etc, and it would be more or less available to all.
A quick aside, my mom is a 7th grade reading/writing teacher in a small (around 18K in the county) west-TN town. Her little school has an ipad cart. Every student does their writing (typing really) on an ipad. Both kids and teachers love it. The news today will probably thrill all of them.
The iPad rules now.. but maybe net-books will make a miraculous comeback soon. Or maybe some other kind of device will take over.. flexible digital displays? Is there anything sooo complex about a textbook (even a digitally super-duper fancy one) that really can't be done on a platform that will adapt to any device? (aka the internet)
There is certainly a laptop market. It would make sense to make the books compatible with the devices students already have.
Of course, if you need more reasons for a switch to EPUB3, it also has brilliant accessibility and will be supported by a multitude of readers, not just iDevices.
It takes specialized environment to make a device specific application and now text book. However, I have read that Apple is keen on ePub 3 standard so perhaps we'll see an export function to make an ePub 3 formatted book in the future. Right now, the iBook Author tool seems to have only PDF as the export function.
It looks like standard epub, with some additional files (so it _should_ degrade.)
Apple put some ncx extensions (looks like thumbnails) into a separate file, and referenced it from a meta tag in the .ncx file. They added their usual com.apple.ibooks.display-options.xml file, that they have for their fixed-layout epubs, but I think they're using CSS for layout in the new files.
The xhtml/css generated from their app doesn't render well in a browser or calibre. I suspect that's because of their use of avant-garde css features (e.g. @page ). I think these files would be able to degrade to other epub readers with some css tweaks.
Does that mean you can't charge money for your output unless it's through the iBookstore? In other words, you couldn't publish for-purchase work to other eBook stores like Kindle?
Don’t get me wrong, this looks really neat, and I think this is a glimpse into the future of education. I’m just a bit sick of Apple getting a free pass on things that people would be up in arms about if they came from almost any other tech company.
It wouldn't have been impossible for Apple to push the CSS extensions to {CSS3}+1 and be using an open format. But no, it has to be Apple-branded and proprietary..
On the other hand, the textbook makers currently have such a lock on school districts that I don't feel really bad about this. iPads will only get cheaper.. I'm almost positive kids will complain when they get the shitty scratched up hand-me-down iPad2 the school district has had for 5 years when iPad7 is available -- but I've had worse experiences with paper textbooks. :-)
I mean why couldn't some non-profit organization theoretically have created some HTML standard and template for textbooks with the ability to do videos, interactive input, notes...etc other bells and whistles...then hired expert textbook writers, and just cranked out a few online quality textbooks for use in high schools, colleges or whatever. Then all you'd need to consume the content is any kind of HTML reader/browser on any type of computing device.
What has really been preventing this from happening? I just don't get what business Apple has in "reinventing" textbooks or e-book formats or why we had to wait all these years for them to do it (and lock it into their ecosystem).
What’s much cooler are the books that are possible with the tools Apple provides now. They are like Al Gore’s Our Choice (whose UI was phenomenally awesome), only even better (when looking at some details), also better integrated and (at least nearly) standards based.
Oh, and their authoring tool makes it easy for nearly everyone to make books like that and easily distribute them. That’s just cool, independent of any education bullshit that’s going on.
This will only benefit kids at the richest schools, which will not fix America's education problem.
Schools can loan out iPads that they get at a discount from Apple, or colleges can even include them in the cost of tuition. I know quite a few people in college right now that receive a Macbook Pro as part of their college tuition (with no option to decline it and save on tuition). So an iPad would be significantly cheaper than that, and arguably just as useful for most college curriculums.
Only if you assume that iPads never break, all textbooks will be published with iPad versions (otherwise you'd need an iPad and some normal textbooks), you can't buy used textbooks, and you can't sell your textbooks when you're done with them.
Damaging the iPad is a concern, so is theft. But there are too many scenarios there to analyze the economics of each. For instance, say an iPad + eBooks replaces a laptop with textbooks, the iPad is cheaper to replace than a laptop. What if you lose your book bag full of 5 new 80 dollar text books, then it's a wash. The cost of 8 semesters worth of textbooks might be more expensive than the cost of 3 499 iPads + eBooks. So forth.
Textbooks + iPad versions. More of a problem in college than high school where the schools often have long term contracts with the publishers.
All in all, it seems like a step in the right direction. Also, one can imagine that Apple is going to keep the iPad 2 on the market at a reduced cost when the iPad 3 comes out, similarly to what they've done with the iPhone. So over time it'll become even more cost effective.
I'm sorry but, what the hell are you talking about? Many schools require students to have laptops in high school now. Teachers are constantly being told that then need to use more and more technology in their classrooms to better engage their students. If there aren't students who can afford machines then they are given one in class.
My mom is a 7th grade reading/writing teacher in a small (around 18K in the county) west-TN town. Her little school has an ipad cart. Every student does their writing (typing really) on an ipad. Both kids and teachers love it. The news today will probably thrill all of them.
I'm jealous of the kids - I remember lugging around 30 pounds of books and a bulky binder everywhere, and even then making frequent locker runs. And I have few fond memories of textbooks in technical subjects, where a few simple demonstrations (now embedable!) could often go further than a mountain of diagrams and words.
But now that I think about it, if you actually have a keyboard attached to the device this is a solved problem. Just port emacs or vi.
edit: source http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/19/live-coverage-of-apples-...
The richest kids can already go to private schools and get a great prep education.
The poorest kids are stuck in terrible public school districts because of their zipcode, yet the per pupil spending can be as high as private schools.
Now if these kids are given a choice, say, here's a voucher for $10k, enroll in a virtual school, get an $500 iPad loaded with $100 worth of material. That's a BARGAIN! And it will only get cheaper.
The future of education is choice and private schools. It can still be public in terms of it being funded by public funds, but there's no reason to have the government running schools. They're doing a terrible job, and it has to stop because it's so important that we have good schools.
Most high school students don't have to buy textbooks at all. The school provides them. And nowadays, most schools already have iPads and laptops (school-owned, the parents do not buy them) that the students use in the class room. I imagine this is something that the schools will be interested in buying.
A close friend of mine is a 4th grade teacher, and it is amazing how much technology they have in the class room now. Laptops and iPads for almost every single student. This is not a school for "rich kids" either. It is an elementary school in a small town in Iowa, and not a "rich" area in any way.
I just laugh and roll my eyes when I read all the comments here that act like someone is going to hold a gun to a poor parent's head and force them to go without buying food because they have to buy iPads and "thousands of dollars" worth of books. Where is this coming from?
Can a school district buy 1,000 iPads ($500,000) and purchase one iBook to put on all devices ($15)? (total $500,015). The original cost of those books, which would last about a decade, is about $100, so the textbook investment seems a lot cheaper ($100,000).
Or are kids supposed to bring their own iPads ($500 is a lot for some families expecting "free" eduction) and the district provides licenses for the books ($15,000 for one subject per year for the above example, $150,000 over 10 years). That's still more expensive than paper books.
Here is the main take-away from today's event: Apple made some cool tools to enable people to use really neat educational materials, and also simplifies the process of producing said material. Why are we going off on all these other tangents?
For college students, I think this makes complete sense from both an economical and practical standpoint. The iPad is a useful device beyond being a textbook reader and $15 to buy a textbook for class would be fantastic (I might pay $15 to get rid of some of the textbooks cluttering my shelf).
I don't think this college textbooks are an interesting space, however, since individuals are largely responsible for purchasing their own books. Disrupting institutional buying is game changing especially in a world where many if not most school districts are facing budget pressure year after year. This is who Algebra I, Geometry, and Biology textbooks are for, not college students. If they are the primary customer of these resources, I would expect a clear advantage in both the product and the price - similar to how digital encyclopedias and wikipedia completely eliminated the business model of the multi-volume, hard copy encyclopedia. The product appears, at face value, clearly better: up to date content, interactivity, multimedia, zero weight and volume. As far as I can tell, the price, however, is significantly higher than the incumbent product with no "results" to justify the increased price.
As someone who is interested in selling software solutions to customers, I find pitches like this interesting. I also come from a family of teachers (wife, parents, in-laws, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) and feel I can empathize with school's position as a potential customer.
This would give predictable costs and allow schools to outsource work they aren't as good at - tech support.
Not sure how this would play with Apple's hardware-focus sales strategy however.
Try four or five books, and you're close to the cost of an iPad.
In some subjects, that might not be important. In others, like science or math, it might be useful to have up-to-date information presented with the latest pedagogical techniques.
Hell, being able to update textbooks to references the latest internet memes would probably do wonders at raising entertainment value.
Now, with all the major textbook publishers behind them, they're moving FAST into education.
How long until another platform even has a large enough install base and education push to be competitive? And that competitor will have to get the publishers behind them too, and then that system would have to get bigger than the Apple system...
I don't see it, I think Apple is already years ahead of their competition -- most notably because there is no competition for this.
Now the competitors have to -start- entering this market, ---start- making competing products, start building those relationships with authors and publishers...
It'll be an uphill battle and really only Amazon today seems to have any chance at all, and they've not really expressed too much interest in the market yet.
1. It did not impress me (iBooks). Looked like gorgeous Apple design on 'CDROM' type educational software we used to have in the old days.
2. I liked the glossary and notes/annotations that turned into summary cards for learning.
3. Interactive features are added using Keynote(?)
or
4. You need to know 'HTM5' and Javascript to do interactive stuff (this is not GarageBand for eLearning as someone told me it would be).
5. The way iBooks Textbooks are now part of iTunes U does add a lot to iTunes U. Now it can disrupt LMS (Learning Management Systems) vendors as well.
6. I still love eInk.
Then some worries.
7. What happened to epub and similar standards?
8. Is this new format a lovely zip file we can extract and inspect?
9. Is it possible to read iBooks on other devices/platforms?
10. Am I allowed to share my iBooks with friends and relatives?
11. Will my grandchildren be able to read my iBooks in 50 years time?
1. Go to an Apple store and use it. Its nothing like a CDROM encyclopedia. Encarta comes to mind. The richness of Apple's Textbook experience is definitely immersive and, like most of their products, can't be perceived until you actually use it for a while.
3. Interactive features can be a movie, HTML(5), 3D, or, yes, a Keynote presentation. Imagine a richer image gallery type experience, but with text, transitions, effects, etc. All this can be done w/ Keynote (and a little bit of visual design know-how) right now.
4. Not basic Keynote-style interactive stuff like I described above. You need to be able to produce and edit movies to add a movie. You need to be able to use 3-D software to make a 3-D model. This is obvious stuff. Multiple disciplines go into making even paper textbooks.
6. eInk IS great... for long-format reading. K-12 and Undergrad textbooks never really involve that much long-format reading. Plus Apple is trying to really show that there are alternative ways to learn besides reading. Getting immersed in the subject matter — whether that's through video, audio, games, text, or anything — is the real threshold to learning.
7. iBook is based on the ePub3 standard. I think they're one in the same, but with different headers.
8. See above.
9. No. Never will be.
10. No. Probably will never be able to.
11. No. Textbooks won't exist in 50 years as all knowledge will grow into your brain from a bionano parasite injected into all humans upon birth.
OK, now to take 9,10, and 11 more seriously:
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, textbooks are hugely expensive and are NOT designed to last forever. They contain proprietary information owned by a publisher who has the right to let you not share it. I'm sure some version of these books will be stored in the Library of Congress forever. And much of the material is probably available online or at the library in one way or another. Isn't that fine?
Apple is ushering in a new wave of education materials reform that costs LESS than the current model and is practically weightless. Who cares that you can't pass it on or share it. Its practically disposable.
Now, if Apple has put a real DRM/Encryption in there, it would be quite another story. Even then, 50 years down the track, any digital modern encryption will probably be a 10-second crack away.
I'm pretty sure iBookStore ebooks are DRM'd (same as Kindle files) (EPUB has a provision specifically for DRM, FWIW) but according to an other commenter the .ibook output of iBook Author is an epub3 book, you can just change the file extension and drop it into an ebook reader (though Apple has apparently added e.g. CSS extensions for nifty effects, which your ebook reader likely won't support).
I do too, but for a novel. For a next-generation textbook, I'd rather have videos, animations, interactive materials. It sucks at sunlight, but again I study at my room and maybe that'll change in a few years.
> 8. Is this new format a lovely zip file we can extract and inspect?
Do you think that publishers that sell you a physical book for $119 would let you inspect their digital books and possibly re-sell them?
> 9. Is it possible to read iBooks on other devices/platforms?
It might be. I think it depends on what publishers want (DRM'ed or non-DRM'ed).
> 10. Am I allowed to share my iBooks with friends and relatives?
In the future, I'm sure you will.
> 11. Will my grandchildren be able to read my iBooks in 50 years time?
If YOU bought them, sure (that is, if Apple is still around). If your school bought them for you, probably not.
If it's not epub (not 100% familiar with format), it's just xhtml, css, svg, some plists and all your assets (jpgs, pngs, etc)
All of which is fine for a bog standard textbook, but Apple's working to make these things more useful - full color interactive experiments, video, etc.
Very few textbooks are read linearly. All would benefit from solid interactivity, search and annotating capabilities.
Random access speed (when going to a specific page, or to return a list of results) is also nice for a textbook, while it's not very useful for a novel.
nb: the more I think about it, the more those e-textbook sound like modern Hypercard stacks.
E-ink is a bad fit for them. All it has going for it is the lower price of available devices (which is a major plus) and that some people claim they get eyestrain from reading on LCDs (hardly an issue with textbooks).
iPad is incomparably better for anything that uses more than straight text.
Even today's textbooks would be very poor on Kindle compared to iPad.
But today's bestsellers are much better on Kindle than iPad, in my opinion. I like the e-ink for long periods of text reading.
For a traditional publisher to switch to a digital/interactive workflow is a lot of hard-core changes. Target platform and the part of the workflow Apple has has announced is - probably - not that big. They will have a lot more issues around decided the type of content to migrate, kinds of assets/widgets to use, information design of an interactive eBook, firing the track driver company, etc.
If somebody later provides a good alternative technological solution, the change required would be on the last 20% of the production pipeline. And several companies tried to provide a solution earlier, they just did not catch on because they did not have enough of a pieces to make it compelling (enTourage eDGe anyone?).
Of course, in a meanwhile, Apple will massively benefit from the early bird factor and may create de-facto lock-in by just being the first to actually offer a good solution (which includes democratization of the publishing tools by making the Author application free). This was the payoff of all the costs that went into making iPhone, the developers went to it, therefore the iPad already had huge momentum behind it from day one. Now Author builds on iPad's momentum.
But that's different from a real lock-in, such as Windows (temporarily) not sharing the details on how to make a browser to be default and making IE browser a default for all web-related stuff. Or the lock-in of the secure boot.
I'd venture that being able to present it to the general public as both a cost-cutting measure and a technology initiative will greatly increase adoption.
You're going to have to make sure students don't use this to browse the internet and/or play games during class. Let's say the teacher is giving the students a lecture, and refers them to a page in the textbook for more information. They're not going to be able to check if ever student is gaming or browsing the web on their iPad.
Right now students can still play games using their other devices, but in that case, the teacher can take it away for the day. Here, the iPad contains all their textbooks. If they take away, the student can longer use their textbooks.
Obviously, not every student is going to to do this, but it brings in another opportunity for the student to not pay attention.
Here's the Help section for "publishing to iBookstore": https://gist.github.com/1641657
And this is from the iBooks Author homepage: "Available free on the Mac App store, iBooks Author is an amazing new app that allows anyone to create beautiful Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could."
I suspect with lots of students they sell their old textbooks to save space as much as to recoup some of the cost (or get some money for beer).
Spent no more than ten minutes doing copy/paste and now I have a beautiful digital edition of "War is a Racket" in my iPad. I'll do the same for my whole collection of Sherlock Holmes books I got from the gutenberg project.
Believe me it is that simple.
My question is, can these be put onto a Kindle? Also, is there an iBook app for Windows/OSX?
I tried creating a document in iBooks Author and I'm disappointed. It doesn't allow one to embed a Youtube video. One can get around this by creating a Dashcode widget and using the widget to play a Youtube video but this seems like too much work. As a teacher, why would I go through all this trouble just to create a book than can only be properly viewed on Apple devices? I'm not requiring my students to by Apple products.
I must be missing something. What?
> [...]
> I must be missing something. What?
That what you're doing is, sorry to say, absolutely stupid. Embedding a youtube video? Why not just frame wikipedia pages while you're at it? You're trying to embed not only content which may not last in time, but content which will bring down your network when 30 students launch the video at once. And you're creating a book which requires an internet connection, which is bloody terrible.
Why don't you just embed the video itself, which is surely supported?
Presently, all digital mathematics content made available to students from publishers requires an internet connection. And is an iPad app going to contain an entire semester's worth of video content? How many gigs would that take? The iPad doesn't have enough disk space to hold more than a couple of books with all of the lecture videos contained within it. As such, isn't a better idea to allow <embed> tags and have Youtube videos played from within the iBook accessing the internet? I think so.
Your first sentence is rude. I don't think it is appropriate for this website.
You might create a book if you worked for a school district that as policy provides iPads to the students. That's the value proposition Apple is offering: schools spend a ton of money on buying textbooks and buying new editions every so often. If Apple can make it cheaper to use iPads, then the school benefits by switching to iPads.
I'd like to use something like iBook Author but only if I can export it in a device independent way.
1) The point of iPad learning isn't words on paper, it's finding new ways to engage students using platforms that naturally excite them. By claiming what we need is "cheap words on cheap paper", you're essentially ignoring all technology. Even paper was too expensive for schools in the past, and technology will catch up.
2) Ebooks reach MUCH further than paper. Is your biology book available in rural India? With smartphone penetration in the developing world hitting all time highs and expected to expand even more dramatically, this kind of system opens up the possibility for globalizing education and giving any school with this device great tools. Will the iPad/iDevice lead the charge in the developing world? Probably not, but this is opening the doors, defining the systems and getting the entire chain into it, from publishers, to authors, to teachers and students. It's a great first step.
This iPad thing is where technology is going. It's good, no doubt. But as far as disrupting the textbook industry, we seem to be skipping a few steps. Cheap textbooks have to appear before cheap textbooks on electronic devices, and we don't really have that yet.
But its not as cheap as it could be if the format was open so other device manufacturerers could compete to build the best low cost hardware for schools. As it stands its mainly just moving the lions share of the income from textbook publishers to apple.
The right thing to do IMO is to focus on a standard open format so there can be increased competition not just on the cost of the books but on the hardware as well. Schools need sustainable barganing power to get the best materials for their students now and in the future. Vendor lock in takes that leverage away.
Such open textbook innovation is already happening without apple. I applaud Apple's effort to innovate on the format to provide richer more teacher customizable content but I can't get behind the lock in even if its somewhat cheaper up front.
Lets assume you're talking about a high school, they have four grades, 9, 10, 11 & 12 and are on a semester system. How many classes does each student take a semester? 10? 7? (My high school was run like a college so my experience isn't typical. We took 10 classes each semester and had 2.5 textbooks per class (english classes often had 6-7 books) Each class requires how many text books? 1.2? 2?
If we assume lower numbers for a typical high school, 4 grades, 1.2 text books per class, 2 semesters per year, 7 classes per semester and a textbook cost of $80 is 4 x 1.2 x 2 x 7 x 80 = $5,376 in text books to put one student thru the whole four years.
Alternatively, the school could buy one iPad, and with an average textbook cost of $15 and everything else the same the calculation is: 4 x 1.2 x 2 x 7 x 15 + $500 = $1,508.
We can assume in both cases, the iPad and the Texbooks last 3 years (6 semesters, and 6 different students) before having to be replaced.
To me, the iPad solution looks cheaper, and all the other benefits- less weight, more interactivity, etc, come for free.
Edit: Left out a term in the second calculation, so corrected, and using asterisks for multiplication resulted in bad formatting, so fixed.
I suspect this assumption is flawed. Textbooks will last much longer than an iPad, especially once you start considering theft.
The downside of this setup to me is that the students would need the iPads at home to do homework. So either you let the students take them from the class room (where I suspect they will get stolen relatively frequently), or require students to own their own iPad (which isn't really feasible). If this solution had a way of viewing the books via a computer as well, then it starts to become feasible.
If you calculate ~25 years for a physical textbook, it doesn't look anywhere near as appealing to use an iPad. Which leads me to find it unlikely that the iBooks textbooks will be adopted in public school. However, private schools (which could require deposits on the iPads, and could also simply charge for them if needed) may well find this announcement useful.
If school districts opted for this feature, the iPad could simply stop working if not connected to the internet for a week, and when it does connect to the internet, it checks to see if its been stolen and if so, wipes itself and renders itself inoperable.
This would be relatively easy for Apple to implement and is the kind of thing they would do if they're entering into agreements to sell large numbers of iPads to school districts.
Thus stealing a school iPad makes little sense- the machine would have no value after a week.
Edit: He proposed a problem with my perspective, I proposed a solution. So, naturally, I'm being down voted.
According to some answers on Quora[1], textbooks are replaced closer to every 7 - 10 years, so, again, I suspect you're wrong in that they won't last as long. They're quite durable.
> I doubt there would be much iPad theft, and if there was, it wouldn't be too hard for Apple to provide technical solutions that make the schools iPads difficult to use and thus resell on the secondary market, much the same way the "Find my iPhone" lets you remotely wipe your phone. If school districts opted for this feature, the iPad could simply stop working if not connected to the internet for a week, and when it does connect to the internet, it checks to see if its been stolen and if so, wipes itself and renders itself inoperable.
I agree that there are some solutions, but given how much there is to be gained by someone figuring out how to bypass it, I wouldn't be surprised if someone figured out how to.
Even given that textbook theft and iPad theft will be equivalent in dollars (that is, for every iPad that's stolen 5 - 10 textbooks are stolen), I would still question that calculation. For example, the $15/textbook only holds when iBooks is not the sole distribution channel. When it is, publishers can set their own price.
Now, don't get me wrong, I would love for this to work. I think this is a great idea. I'm just frustrated that it only works on the iPad, rather than being open and having a great app for the iPad. Being able to transition into it by using laptops, computer labs and iPads simultaneously would just be so much easier.
2) I'm not necessarily saying that they get stolen when they go home. A room full of iPads just sitting there over the summer is a very tempting target for thieves.
To the second, most school districts, as far as I know, have central warehouses for textbooks, so why wouldn't at least a portion of a warehouse be converted to secure iPad storage?
Your quora answer is talking about when textbook versions are replaced. EG: Every 7-10 years they go from American History, 3rd Edition to American History 4th Edition (or 6th or a competing textbook.)
I'm talking about how long the physical books themselves last. EG: The school may stay standardized on the same edition of the book for 10 years, but replace their entire inventory completely 3 times in that period.
>where I suspect they will get stolen relatively frequently
I think your assumption is even more flawed. Textbooks are replaced every 3+ years or so, that's a given. You're worried about something that might happen.
That's not a given. According to the answers on Quora[1] it seems like 7 - 10 years is more realistic.
> You're worried about something that might happen.
I assure you, iPads will get stolen, it's merely question of how often and my suspicion is they will get stolen more often than textbooks do, which he neglects to take into account in his calculations.
[1]: http://www.quora.com/How-often-does-a-primary-and-secondary-...
What if the family can't pay the deposit?
And I'm not necessarily suggesting that the student or the students family is stealing it. How tempting would a room full of iPads be to a thief? Or how about a group of teenagers at a bus stop / at the mall / somewhere not watching their backpacks?
> Anecdotal, I realize.
All I have is speculation, so I think an anecdote is acceptable :)
My school has 4 classes per semester, and a lot of times electives, like construction, art, mechanics etc. don't have textbooks, so even if we go by 7 classes per semester, we can probably cut the amount of classes that require textbooks in half. And if you factor in the fact that textbooks can last 6 years (going by my anecdotal evidence), you can get the textbook and iPad price quite similar. In this case, schools may go with the iPad anyway, given the push made by made schools to provide students with digital literacy.
The 3 years I chose was based on the average time that textbooks lasted in my high school. (I worked in the text book department during school, and that was the time period, though it may have been 3.5 years.)
Based on your maths if you consider that each student uses 17 individual books per year, now consider that 2 are scrapped and need to be replace the cost for that year for that students is only 2 * book cost ($80). So $160. Now consider that they attend for 4 years, thats only $640. Not thousands. Even if they are scrapped every 4 years, the cost only becomes $1,280 per student.
So to go paperless from the current system the device and content needs to be less than $640 for the students entire attendance at that school (4 years).
A device like the iPad won't last 4 years in an education system, not including the battery life and software support by Apple.
Great for a private school, but as the education system currently stands. No way.
But I'm using High School as the example and assuming the district is paying the costs and keeping textbooks and iPads on average for 3 years.
Some people have claimed that iPads won't last very long... but Apple offers AppleCare+ (at least for the iPhone, I expect they'll offer even better warrantees for school districts.)
AppleCare+ will replace a damaged device up to three times for $49 over the course of 3 years, IIRC.
I think the economics are great for high schools, but positively spectacular for colleges (and I'm assuming college textbooks are no longer as cheap as $100, and that the resell situation is as bad- we'd be lucky to get $15 on resale, and the books were bound with glue designed to fall apart over the course of a single semester.)