{"id":246518,"date":"2010-01-29T12:10:49","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T17:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.34990"},"modified":"2010-01-29T12:38:45","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T17:38:45","slug":"will-the-ipad-really-revolutionize-textbooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/246518","title":{"rendered":"Will the iPad Really Revolutionize Textbooks?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple’s iPad has been hailed as a smartphone-laptop hybrid and a savior of journalism, but its most important contribution might be to the textbook market. Yesterday Atlantic Business contributor <\/span>Menachem Kaiser<\/a> predicted that the iPad would take off among college students primarily because iBooks might offer the ability to buy textbook chapters the same way you can buy songs on iTunes. Thanks to companies like Inkling, that’s only the first step:<\/p>\n

Inkling is working directly with textbook publishers. First, they’ll
\nport their existing tomes onto Apple’s iPad as interactive, socialized
\nobjects. Then, they’ll create all-new learning modules — interactive,
\nsocial, and mobile — that leave ink-on-paper textbooks in the dust.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is very exciting news, but let’s not forget that electronic textbooks already exist<\/a>.
\nSome of them do much more let you read the text on a laptop — they
\nsave highlighted passages and electronic notes, the text is searchable.
\nSo why they aren’t taking off? <\/p>\n

One explanation is that the technology is still buggy. Another is that the technology is waiting for an exciting platform like iPad (although its unclear to me why other touch-technology e-readers like Sony don’t offer similar potential, although without color.) Another explanation is that
\nprofessors haven’t been steered toward offering and mastering e-books. Certainly, if my experience was any indication, professors are generally about
\ntwo decades behind in tech savvy. <\/p>\n

Another explanation is that the incentive for publishers to
\noffer superior e-textbooks is dulled by the economic reality that e-textbooks generally sell for 50 percent off. That’s even
\nworse if students started to download the chapters a la
\ncarte, or figure out ways to share versions of the chapters over a network. And it’s even worse when you factor in the 30 percent cut that
\nApple takes on book sales.<\/p>\n

But the potential is thrilling, nonetheless. Here’s Paul Boutin from
\nVentureBeat<\/a> on how Inkling and e-textbooks could change the way
\nstudents interact with reading assignments:<\/p>\n

\n

The
\niPad makes it possible to replace static images with interactive
\npuzzles that MacInnis says burn important concepts in to students’
\nbrains better and longer. He showed me a demo learning module that
\nexplained the biological concept of cellular mitosis. It starts with a
\nreal microscope image of a cell. A caption, simultaneously spoken by a
\nvoiceover (They call this karaoke mode. It turns out to help memory
\nbetter than either text or speech by itself) instructs me to tap the
\ncells nucleus three times to simulate its breakdown. Further steps in
\nthe mitosis process require me to pinch, drag or swipe components in
\nthe cell after identifying them. When I’m done, I have a memory of
\nhaving walked through the process physically, rather than just scanning
\nan illustration with my eyes…<\/p>\n

Besides
\nthe interactive color format, Inkling’s technology goes beyond the
\nKindle and other readers by making it possible to hop around a book, to
\nhand out individual chapters as assignments, and to take notes in
\nhighlighter yellow right on the text. The notes are sharable among a
\nsocial network of students and instructor.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n



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Apple’s iPad has been hailed as a smartphone-laptop hybrid and a savior of journalism, but its most important contribution might be to the textbook market. Yesterday Atlantic Business contributor Menachem Kaiser predicted that the iPad would take off among college students primarily because iBooks might offer the ability to buy textbook chapters the same way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}