Apple Expands Availability of iBooks Textbooks and iTunes U Course Manager to Over 50 Countries

Cool! I wish my teachers would use iBooks Textbooks...

More schools should implement this. I'd rather not have to carry 4 textbooks around my school.

dannyyankou said:

More schools should implement this. I'd rather not have to carry 4 textbooks around my school.

Click to expand...

More and more schools will eventually use tablets. I think it's pretty obvious that the good ol' textbook will get replaced sooner or later by the tablet / tablet computer or laptop.

Apple is trying to be the one with the most easily integrated solution for education. iTunes U and / or iBooks is brilliant. Teachers have to get used to the idea though.

Now, if only the Volume Purchase Program would be made available for the same 50+ countries...

Great, now I just need iBooks Author and iTunes Course Manager to both be on the iPad! Sigh.

how is all this progressing?

since the initial demonstration and release there hasnt been that much news

And where the list of those 50+ countries can be found?

MacSlavko said:

And where the list of those 50+ countries can be found?

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I had to poke around the iTunes U site to find this:

iTunes U is a free service available to qualifying K-12 public and private schools, as well as two- and four-year accredited, degree-granting, public or private colleges and universities in the United States, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Republic of, Latvia, Lithuania, Macau, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, United Kingdom, Venezuela and Vietnam.

Click to expand...

They need to look at other countires

Since they were caught fixing prices in the US and cannot do it anymore there, I think they are expanding to other countries, till they are caught there too..Bad Apple.../s

numlock said:

how is all this progressing?

since the initial demonstration and release there hasnt been that much news

Click to expand...

Yupp, this technology will be up and running when I'm long gone from the educational system, hooray.

Don't get me wrong, great for all who follow us, but wow, what a teaser to see how stuff could be so SO much better and then everyone's sleeping and missing the memo.

meh

Glassed Silver:mac

I admit, it sure looks pretty...



And I'm not doubting, that apple has consulted with (if not recruited) some learning materials professionals, but I do have my doubts...

1st off, Having been a student or teacher for nearly all of my life, I claim to have some and quite diverse experience with learning materials. And while the promo material Apple has published sure looks pretty, I doubt whether it makes as much pedagogical sense. In my experience (and in line with scholars in the discipline), the act of growing one's knowledge necessitates both introspection and deliberation. In the case of most students, this actually necessitates a slow pace, and is as such not helped by interacting with your textbook (coincidentally, the biggest selling point).

Secondly, I'm not sure it is coincidental that most of the promo pictures Apple has supplied are decidedly short on facts (instead focusing on snazzy gfx). The real question re the suitability of any tablet for directed educational use, is whether the technology actually supports the learning or not. I know this has been discussed at length, but let me just offer my angle: Many years ago the local market leader in primary education materials made a big push into eLearning materials. I and my team were in on the project and we did a lot of interactive exercises for different courses (e.g. 7th grade geography). While it was a lot of work, we were happy with what the system looked like and what it was able to offer. I later had a chat with the product manager, who reported, their company would be "heading back to the drawing board". While other reasons (classroom IT, teachers' attitudes, budgets) were also cited, one noteworthy aspect was that students almost systematically regarded the exercises' "learning" -part and went right into interacting with the quizzes, resulting in a lot of wrong answers and "very little learning". In fact, the person noted, that in the classrooms he had observed, students seemed bent on crashing or out-foxing the quizzes or (in the most positive cases) had a race to see who could click/type themselves through the exercises the fastest...

Finally, (although I could go on), there is a problem with the "economic rationale". Assuming that a national (or state) education system cannot migrate "over night", these electronic textbooks will have to coexist with paper textbooks for a number of years, thus adding significant costs for both buyers and suppliers. In most areas/nations/states of the world, the "market" will not be big enough for the added investment to seem lucrative. In contrast to e.g. the market for music (I'm thinking iTunes store), the market for educational materials is both regimented and follow tight guidelines for curricula (most administrations having their own views of what 7th grade geography should cover), further exacerbated by that (although it may not be apparent in the bay area) most of the world's schools don't teach in english - in short, the market is highly fragmented, and buyers' decisions are not to be swayed by nice marketing. Except for some selective schools in the US and UK (who might actually compete for the affluents' kids), schools may also not find the concept to have any "market value".

RGDS,