The software that Apple introduced Thursday morning at its "Reinventing Textbooks" event represents many, many great things for education in America -- none of which, alas, is a reinvention of the textbook.
Though Apple's interactive digital iBooks could, in a best-case scenario, provide the heavy artillery to force a much-needed change to the way that K-12 students learn in and out of the classroom (more on that later), it does not fundamentally change anything about the learning technology currently available to students; to wit, much of what Apple showed off will be familiar to anyone who has used Inkling, an iPad app and startup founded by an ex-Apple Education Exec named Matt MacInnis. MacInnis left Apple a few years ago to -- well, to reinvent the textbook. What he saw at Apple's education event gave him a sincere sense of deja vu.
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, especially when it comes to Apple," MacInnis said -- without, it should be noted, any sense of ill will to his former employer -- in an interview with HuffPost.
"I didn't see anything this morning that Inkling doesn't already do...Nothing really blew my mind."
Indeed, of the "new" features that Apple touted in its Thursday morning press event, none were very new to MacInnis or to Inkling users. Consider this list of improvements to iBooks that Apple outed in a press release (modestly titled "Apple Reinvents Textbooks With iBooks 2 for iPad"):
With support for great new features including gorgeous, fullscreen books, interactive 3D objects, diagrams, videos and photos, the iBooks 2 app will let students learn about the solar system or the physics of a skyscraper with amazing new interactive textbooks that come to life with just a tap or swipe of the finger. With its fast, fluid navigation, easy highlighting and note-taking, searching and definitions, plus lesson reviews and study cards, the new iBooks 2 app lets students study and learn in more efficient and effective ways than ever before.
And then watch this video demo of Inkling 2.0, released by the company in August 2011. As you watch, check off all the things that Inkling's e-Textbooks have been able to do for six months that Apple's iBooks 2 can now do:
Inking - A textbook case of innovation. from Inkling on Vimeo.
Not that Inkling or MacInnis are threatened by Apple's new iBooks. For one, Apple seems content focusing on grade school classrooms, while Inkling, as a platform for publishers, has aimed thus far at the more graphics-intensive and technologically involved college textbooks. (It's more complex to create a textbook for molecular biology than for middle school history, MacInnis said.)
MacInnis said he takes no umbrage at the similarities between Apple's iBooks and his Inkling app, chiefly because of what Apple's initiative could mean to finally transforming the public education landscape in America. It is cause for cautious optimism, MacInnis said, adding,
I'm glad that Apple is raising awareness around the issue of digital textbooks...[I]t really does take a company like Apple to shake up K through 12. You have to deal with school districts, you have to deal with governors, state standards, teachers unions, the overall bureacuracy that's wrapped around the public school system. If there was one thing Steve [Jobs] wanted to change about the world, it would be to get rid of that stuff.
Not that change will come easily, or even very quickly. According to Tony Pfister, CEO of e-Book sales site classbook.com, the upfront cost of iPads -- at $499 a pop, with bulk-buying subsidies generally in the 8 to 10 percent range, per Pfister -- will be enough to turn many cash-strapped, budget-slashing public schools away. Add in wear-and-tear, the threat of stolen and lost iPads in the hands of youngsters and -- most importantly -- the cost of updating an entire school building's infrastructure to accomodate a school full of iPads, and you're talking a serious monetary obstacle.
And yet -- despite these obstacles, a typically hyperbolic marketing push, and the regular proprietary concerns that always surround Apple software -- the movement for a much-needed change has arrived. Apple should be roundly praised for bringing national attention to the issue in a way that only Apple seems to be able to do with its widely-watched, obsessively-followed events. As MacInnis said, it takes a mega-corporation like Apple to shift the conversation and nudge a well-entrenched, multi-billion dollar industry in a proactive direction (just ask the major record labels). And though we shouldn't imagine that every inner-city elementary school student will be flicking and swiping through the alphabet by late 2012, we should celebrate that, at the very least, the nation at large is discussing -- on Twitter, on Facebook and on major television networks -- the need for a more technologically-advanced classroom.
The fact that "iBooks 2" trended on Twitter right alongside #WhyGuysNeedPrenups and "LeBron is 9-2 vs Kobe" is not only evidence of Apple's ongoing ability to insert itself into the zeitgeist, but is also a welcome sign for a national discourse that has thus far been relegated to a too-quiet sphere.
Follow Jason Gilbert on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gilbertjasono
I keep trying to imagine a color device that has e-ink type text. Such a device would have to be bigger than the small Kindle readers so you could zoom images as needed and see proper detail. Maybe this could be done now by using two displays, but this would produce another expensive and bulky device.
1. The POOR they cannot pay for the iPADS plus the possibility for destruction / theft in that environment.
2. APPLE is plotting the vast plunder of educational coffers, selling more of the expensive and overpriced iPADS to gain huge amounts of obscene $$profit$$.
3. The vile license of iBOOK APP forces authors to sell only through the Itunes or ELSE, and APPLE takes 30 % of that, @!##BAZTURDS!!!
Comments
1. The poor are screwed. Only a vast social, cultural and attitude upheaval will help them. Destruction /theft is a concern of even the wealthy school districts. The iPADS incur a level of responsibility that challenge especially younger children. Methods of lockdown may have to be explored to limit the use of games, texting, inappropriate web browsing and unauthorized property transference.
2. The textbook companies are already plundering the educational coffers. Imagine though, a group of teachers creating a textbook and offering it for a fraction of the price the big publishers do.
3. The public wants everything for free, no strings attached. The corporations want to charge a million dollars for that everything with ten year contracts. So a compromise of price and distribution methodology, influenced by free market, state and federal forces, is offered. The iBook app is only an option, one can create without it and there probably will be similar programs released which can do the same thing.
Let's do nothing so that education in Finland, Latin America, Asia and Africa progresses while education in the USA REGRESSES... hm.
BZ.
BZ.
There is nothing an ipad can do that laptops cannot, and laptops never replaced textbooks. Why? Books are cheaper and infinitely more durable. Kids will destroy anything else, and parents can rarely afford to buy something like that over and over.
No. Apple did NOT reinvent the textbook. This will never happen.
Desktops, laptops, for example....?
In schools, iPads are more moble, more interactive and more useful...
This IS the reinvention of school learning resources. It started long ago with Macs (HyperCard) and was copied as usual by the PCers (ToolBook, etc.) but Mac apps and now iPad apps make PCers look more like slate and chalk, as usual.
And you want paper books, huh?
Hm.
BZ.
It's their store!
If You owned a store wouldn't You want to control what You sold?
Jiminy Cricket!
of all the things to complain about.
No one is forcing anyone to put their book on the most successful digital store on the planet!
They could always go door-to-door.
What good is your Inkling book if there's no store to sell it.
Inkling schminkling.
Only a complete business noob would get hung up on your complaints.
You still own your content.
Buy the inkling software and repackage your book with that if you think you need to.
But I'd do that while I was cashing my iTunes checks
when will apple (or a more visionary competitor) introduce something like SIRI for education? question directed learning can be more powerful than answer directed learning in some ways.
also, we about to cross a major pivot point in human consciousness that no one is tracking.
since gutenberg, human information has been locked into 2D thinking. we are about to cross over into 3D representations of all info. im not takling about 2D representations of 3D information or 2.5D representations of 3D. Im taking about AR glasses or microholographic projected 3D.
"The results are in! Read the white paper detailing the Algebra 1 iPad pilot results from Amelia Earhart Middle School in Riverside, California. Comparing student performance from the yearlong pilot, over 78 percent of students using HMH Fuse scored Proficient or Advanced on the state test, compared to only 59 percent of their fellow students at Earhart—a difference of 19 percent in favor of students using the HMH Fuse app."
http://www.hmheducation.com/fuse/pilot-1.php
It's very easy to use if you know your way around iWork.
If your an MS Office user it will take some hunting and pecking to adapt but it should not take more than an hour or so to find your way around.
Not only does this make fancy textbooks but it will also be great for personal and business publishing too.
And for FREE it's amazing!
Even Stephen King doesn't get 70%!!
Apple gives you all the tools And a global Marketplace.
30% is more than fair!
All that said converting a finished file to another format will not be difficult.
I'm sure the software will be available in a matter of weeks.
It's mostly just Java and HTML5.
BZ.
they take a current product, slash the RAM in half, slash the HD size in half, take out any extra's, then sell it to the schools for $200 less than the non-economic model.
this amounts to MORE PROFITS for apple, they make more off schools since they take out more stuff & don't discount a bigger amount thats more comparable to what they removed