Tell that to the kids at my son's high school. most kids are hunched over with the "40-pound backpack" every day. I swear I should invest in a chiropractic care facility, because all of these kids are going to need one, before long.
Apple's January Media Event to Involve Digital Textbooks and Education?
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Tell that to the kids at my son's high school. most kids are hunched over with the "40-pound backpack" every day. I swear I should invest in a chiropractic care facility, because all of these kids are going to need one, before long.
I'm guessing that argument died the second Jeff Bezos went on stage and sold existing Kindle users on the Kindle Fire, which coincidentally, has a display similar to the iPad, but of a slightly lesser quality. Not a peep about the limitations of an IPS display, and but for a few Kindle holdouts, that argument is DOA.
E-Ink is dead for anything but dedicated readers, and textbooks are going to require every kind of electronic media that can be delivered on a mobile device. I guessing that readability on IPS displays will only get better with "retina" resolutions.
Let me reiterate:
dead
andy721
macrumors 6502a
Or higher resolution displays at 30+ inches in order to read comfortably sitting 6+ft away.
carmenodie
macrumors 6502a
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)
I can't wait for Apple to publish their own effing digital books. A fully interactive physics book, chemistry book ect is needed. Screw the publishers that have been sitting on their you know whats. Apple is going to raise hell again on an industry.
I CAN'T WAIT!!!
I can't wait for Apple to publish their own effing digital books. A fully interactive physics book, chemistry book ect is needed. Screw the publishers that have been sitting on their you know whats. Apple is going to raise hell again on an industry.
I CAN'T WAIT!!!
Hastings101
macrumors 68020
It would be nice if this resulted in something that got the movement towards e-textbooks to speed up a bit. I think carrying massive textbooks was the most annoying part of daily college life.
Are we forgetting funding??
Do Apple seriously believe the education system can afford for 20 iPads per classroom? The education system here in Britain can barely afford new text books. If they want iPad to become an in-school learning tool then I'm afraid they'll have to be offered to schools in bulk at a massively lower price. Otherwise this is totally unrealistic and a waste of time.
Do Apple seriously believe the education system can afford for 20 iPads per classroom? The education system here in Britain can barely afford new text books. If they want iPad to become an in-school learning tool then I'm afraid they'll have to be offered to schools in bulk at a massively lower price. Otherwise this is totally unrealistic and a waste of time.
george-brooks
macrumors 6502a
I really hope that this does end up being the topic of this event and that apple makes strides to to break back into the education market. Textbooks on the iPad would be the final push to get me to buy a new model(I previously bought one for school and quickly sold it, discovering that for a similar price to my 64GB wi-fi + 3G, the MacBook air was a better choice). Mac is number one on campus with students and it would be great to see that reflected in campus computer labs. Now that the mac is truly a cross platform machine, I don't understand why schools dont just buy one computer (mac) with a copy of windows installed, rather than having separate mac and PC workstations. I don't understand why apple didn't further develop the eMac. Would be great to see a fairly bare bones computer only available for educational institutions with mac elegance and style and Mac OSX. Maybe an education version on Lion that makes booting to windows even easier, perhaps includes education tools like an iTextbook library on OSX? I know everyone wants iBooks on the Mac, but I don't see that happening any time soon for the general population, given Apple's track record with the iPod and iTunes being released for windows, iOS features taking a long time to get "back to the mac" and generally useless (launchpad). But for textbooks specifically on computers specifically for education, now that makes sense.
WeegieMac
Guest
Did they not say that about the iPad in general?
george-brooks
macrumors 6502a
This is an argument that we've been having since the iPad came out, and I think that most people who choose an iPad as their eReader do so because they PREFER a backlit display. Multi-touch as opposed to eInk would also give the textbooks the ability to be interactive, which I think is one of the main reasons to push them to iPad and something I hope is incorporated. Interactivity might be the thing that pushes me to actually do my reading assignment that would otherwise be extremely boring
E-ink is not dead, it's great for reading and that's what Textbooks are about. Reading.
HiRez
macrumors 603
For straight text, maybe. For images and multimedia or anything interactive, no. I read 1-3 hours a day in iBooks on both iPad and iPhone, I have no problem with it.
george-brooks
macrumors 6502a
My aunt is a teacher at a public high school in Connecticut and at her school, all teachers and administrators were recently given iPads. She loves it and says it is a very useful tool as a teacher. When you consider the cost of traditional textbooks, the iPad becomes a very cost-effective option, especially if Apple gives educational institutions massive bulk discounts, which they would be stupid not to do. Lots of doubters on here, but I think that iTextbooks are going to start the first of many posthumus Jobs revolutions!
Schools in the UK don't even issue textbooks now in many cases because they seek to dumb down children by saying students will lose/forget them. They seek to create mindless slaves of the state and its corporate backers.
george-brooks
macrumors 6502a
I often have that problem too. A relatively simple solution that requires minimal will power: Airplane Mode.
For images and multimedia, it's not really a textbook, now is it? I think Apple should wait until E-ink catches up so that it can be multitouch and faster. It would be a better textbook alternative than an iPad right now.
I believe e-ink is better for textbooks than LCD
Digital text books will be awesome on so many levels!
- Don't carry the weight of several books around!
- Books don't get damaged, pages torn.
- Fixes for typos or new information can be downloaded immediately.
- Imbedded animation and video demonstrations on a topic.
- The ability to search, look up the definition to words just by tapping them.
- Book store will not run out or you wont have to wait for the book store to get the books in after class starts.
- The list goes on and on!!!
CapnJackGig
macrumors 6502a
Anything involving the lackluster iBooks store is a major fail. Thank god for Kindle.
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Reading on an LCD is awful
Can't sell back e-books
Apple is the provider - lame.
I'd have much more faith in it if Amazon was the one providing all of this.
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Reading on an LCD is awful
Can't sell back e-books
Apple is the provider - lame.
I'd have much more faith in it if Amazon was the one providing all of this.
BJMRamage
macrumors 68030
Seems a smart move if all this is true.
I love the SolarWalk and SkyWalk apps and those are almost encyclopedia-type apps which is similar to textbook in essence.
I can see teachers using them to plug in and show on screen larger versions..."flip two pages forward...see the timeline of events for this war? scroll through it and look at each little "i" for more info."
I know a private school around here used to "give" MacBooks to students upon entering 9th grade...now they "give" out iPads as a overheard a previous student saying she wished she was there now.
AND a little tip for reading and not getting sidetracked as I can easily get with the internet or games/tv/anything...plug in headphones and listen to music while reading. not really listening to music but hearing it as a Grey Noise seems to help me. maybe throw on a score/soundtrack or classical music to make ti more "movie-like"
I love the SolarWalk and SkyWalk apps and those are almost encyclopedia-type apps which is similar to textbook in essence.
I can see teachers using them to plug in and show on screen larger versions..."flip two pages forward...see the timeline of events for this war? scroll through it and look at each little "i" for more info."
I know a private school around here used to "give" MacBooks to students upon entering 9th grade...now they "give" out iPads as a overheard a previous student saying she wished she was there now.
AND a little tip for reading and not getting sidetracked as I can easily get with the internet or games/tv/anything...plug in headphones and listen to music while reading. not really listening to music but hearing it as a Grey Noise seems to help me. maybe throw on a score/soundtrack or classical music to make ti more "movie-like"
Schmitty11
macrumors 6502
This may be interesting...
Gasu E.
macrumors 603
Disagree. I love my classic Kindle, but it is awful for illustrations-- an absolutely neccessary component of textbooks.
You've lost the argument when you fall back to a strict definition of "textbook". Nobody expects etextbooks to only deliver static pages; that's already available, and dynamic E-ink displays are not "just around the corner".
I'm guessing you won't be in the demographic for these.