Back in the mid 80's when I was in collage for engineering I was thinking about how cool it would be if textbooks could be more interactive like computers. Back then computer animation was still pretty primitive compared to today, so it wasn't really feasible at that time.When the iPad was announced I began racking my brain for applications - which wasn't hard - and one that came back to me was for text books. How cool would it be to learn chemistry or biology or physics using an interactive text book based on the iPad. Well, obviously this is not a new idea. I think eLearning has been around for a long time, but still if a publisher could translate the text book experience to the iPad the possiblities would be endless.
Well, I'm happy to say that one company is doing that for some major academic publishers. According to the WSJ via PCWorld, ScrollMotion has been tapped by publishers like McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin, and Kaplan to create interactive text books for the iPad. I would love to work on something like that - maybe a programming book could be written to be more interactive. Wouldn't that be cool? Anyway, I'm excited to see the results.
4 comments:
I'm excited about the potential for the iPad in education, too.
I too am excited for the iPad and it's potential in education. In fact, I have written a post on my blog about six ways it will change education. Only one of those ways relates to it being an ereader for textbooks. To read more about my opinion go to http://www.edutechnophobia.com/2010/02/six-ways-the-ipad-will-transform-education/.
I'll take a look at your post!
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