Obviously not exhaustive, but here are a few ‘creative’ ideas for using Apple’s brilliant free piece of software, iBook Author, rather than the traditional ways you might use it.

1 – An obvious use is to write your own iBook about your teaching practice, so that you can share your ideas with the wider education community. The end result is very professional, and with time spent, the skills needed to use it are not too hard to learn. If you want to extend your book further too, there are lots of widgets you can add in such as the ones in iAd Producer and other third party widgets from other developers.

2 – It would be a really effective way of collecting and presenting the work of an action research group, so that you can publish your findings if appropriate. The flexibility of the software means that you can present all types of data, as well as embed videos and so on.

The computer company, Apple, whom you may have heard of from such products as the iPhone, iPad and iPod, made an announcement in the Big Apple on the 19th of January 2012 that has started to create waves in the education system in the States – waves that will likely ripple across the pond to us in the UK.

What was the announcement?

Well, there were two main parts:

1. a new online bookstore selling interactive electronic-textbooks
2. iBooks Author, a tool that allows anyone to create their own electronic-books (e-books) for sale in this new bookstore.