Stephen Downes

Relaunching the iPad
Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, January 20, 2012.

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Apple yesterday launched "a revamped version of its iTunes U platform that could challenge traditional learning management systems. It also unveiled new tools for creating and distributing low-cost digital textbooks that could speed the pace of e-text adoption." It also announced the idea was to enable "anyone anywhere at any time to take courses for free." See also: MacRumors, Phil Hill, Breant Schlenker, Seb Schmoller, PC Mag, , Digital Education, That's Life, Dan Wineman, Financial Post, The Wheel, Ars Technica ("It used to be about location, location, location. Now it's all about connection, connection, connection," Rankin told Ars. "It will take people a long time to realize the implications of that." ),

Not all is sweetness and light. "There's no denying that this new textbook experience will revolutionize learning and education," Saka told Ars. "But will Apple be willing to let users interact with the textbooks on multiple digital platforms and not just the iPad?" So far, according to the EULA for iBooks Author, that answer seems to be 'no.'" As Dan Wineman says, Apple "in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software's output. It's akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty." John Gruber: "This is Apple at its worst."

Related: D'Arcy Norman creates an iPad textbook. "Drop-dead simple. I don’t really care about what this means for textbook publishers, but having these tools in the hands of students, and seeing what they create – now that’s some interesting stuff. Evan loves messing around with building sites with Hype – I can’t wait to see what he does with this stuff..." Here's a hands-on look aqt authoring. And as Jeff Dunn notes, When major companies fight over education products, we all win. Last night, just hours before Apple’s announcement, Chegg announced a new way to let you buy and rent digital textbooks. It may not be as elegant as the iPad (yet), but it’s got Apple and Kno on notice." (Hits Today: 2 Total: 497) [Direct Link] [Tags: none]

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Comments

Re: Relaunching the iPad

Frank Lowney, January 22, 2012

Now that the "barking dog syndrome" that fuels today's echo-blogging has spent itself and the bit stream is calmer, more thoughtful analyses are beginning to emerge.
Since I think that eTextbooks should be free to students with textbook writers being supported in new and different ways than the grossly inefficient systems inherited from the print era, Apple's EULA doesn't bother me a bit.
For those who do care, the salient fact is that the .ibooks format is, AFAIK, unencumbered and quite transparent. It should be quite possible to understand this format and either hand code *.ibooks files or build tools that do exactly the same thing as the iBooks Author app does.
There is also nothing to stop those who make other hardware and software eReaders from developing the ability to display .ibooks files just as well as iBooks 2 does.
Finally, there are those who fault Apple for not confining itself to the parameters of the EPUB 3.0 standard. Quite frankly, that would have rendered a rather puny eTextbook and I'm quite pleased that they didn't take that road. I'd rather see IPDF (the keepers of the EPUB standard) catch up with Apple. So far, no one has released an EPUB 3 eReader. The iBooks and iBooks 2 apps still support EPUB 2.1 with optional use of video and audio as per EPUB 3. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

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