What’s so new about electronic textbooks? Haven’t e-books been around for ages?
Although e-books have arguably been around for decades, what’s new here is the way the textbook has been re-engineered to take advantage of the features of Apple’s popular iPad, and the result is a textbook that allows users to interact with the book, navigate it quickly and record their personal learning within it. Photo galleries, videos, sound files and three-dimensional models that respond to the reader’s touch can all be incorporated into the books. Students can highlight and make notes on any page, make their own flashcards, do end-of-topic quizzes and quickly search within the book’s glossary to understand meaning.
To start lining the virtual shelves of their new iBooks store, Apple has partnered with three large educational publishers: Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. These publishers have already released some textbooks for the secondary high school market in the States. These books are retailing at $14.99, which is substantially less than American students (or schools) usually pay for a textbook. However, this is much more than UK students are used to paying for their textbooks, which are usually provided free by the school, so how many UK students will buy their own textbooks this way remains to be seen.
Can I write my own textbook?
If you have a Macintosh computer running OS X, or know someone who does, then it’s very easy for you to become an e-book author of interactive books. You can add your own photos, videos, glossaries, and animations to increase interactivity and then put your books up for sale. Or, if you’re feeling generous, you can build an online course on the upgraded iTunes U and put all your teaching materials onto the World Wide Web for free.
