Apple announced new tools for education recently, including enhancements to iTunes U and textbooks for iPad. If you have an iPad the free Life on Earth textbook available in the Books section of the iTunes store is a good example of what's possible with the new textbook tools.
Here are some first impressions:
- The new tools are Mac/iOS-centric. The complete set of course enhancements to iTunes U is only available on iOS. The new, free textbook authoring tool, IBooks Author, is a Mac-only app and the iBooks textbook capability is iPad-only.
- Get ready to upgrade your software: It's a bit complicated to locate all the required tools. You have to download the latest version of iTunes (software update), the new iTunes U iPad app (iTunes store), the new iBooks 2 iPad app (iTunes store) and the iBooks Author app (Mac App Store). If you want to use the course features of iTune U you also need to get your iTunes U administrator to grant you access to the Course Manager tool, a web-based app that works only with Safari.
- IBooks Author for editing textbooks is very nice with excellent templates. Previewing a book you are authoring requires that an iPad be tethered to your Mac via the USB cord. This generally works well, but I experienced some hangs on the iPad during and after previewing a book and had to reboot the iPad. Editing a book is really easy if you have all the content ready. Embedded video works great, although you have to encode it to a specified format using iTunes.
- This may seem obvious, but as with most authoring environments, interactivity doesn't come for free. You'll need someone who can create animations or other media to give your content pizzazz. For example, the Life on Earth textbook contains wonderful 3-D animations created by MacArthur "Genius Grant" winner Drew Berry. That kind of talent isn't readily available on a lot of campuses. There has already been some kvetching about the lack of interactivity in the first batch of textbooks available in iBooks.
- The new iTunes U course tools may have the most immediate impact. They add the course content creation and distribution capabilities of traditional course management systems to iTunes U. You start with a course outline and add related content, assignments, etc. The courses are public, though, so instructors who are concerned about keeping their course content within their institution will not want to use these tools.
Overall, this looks like a great start toward a promising toolkit for educators. I'm looking forward to migrating some MD Anderson public course content to the iTunes U course format.
