New from the Apple Education Event

The Apple event dedicated to education did not make it cling to the screens of monitors, as is usually the case, thousands of people. What is it? Apple is not the same or at the educational event, by definition, can not be anything interesting? On the contrary. So, on January 19, at 7 pm Moscow time, Apple presented some small, but, in my opinion, very interesting software innovations.

iBooks 2

A popular e-book reader application has received a major update. This is due mainly to the emergence of a new format of books, namely textbooks ( textbooks ). The essence of textbooks is the combination of the benefits of paper books and the capabilities of the iPad. Apple's path is logical: with the growing popularity of the AppStore for the iPad, more and more different books and magazines began to appear, which were separate applications. They are bright and colorful, they have a lot of real interactive, but the logical organization “one book / magazine - one application” did not suit Apple. So in the fifth iOS update, Newsstand appears - a catalog of magazines in which you can track new issues of your favorite publications. Now a similar fate befell interactive books.
The new format of interactive books iBooks offers:

• Image Galleries
• Charts, video, 3D-animation
• Widgets
• Using HTML and CSS for book layout
• The ability to mark words and sentences directly in the text and make cards for memorization
• Access footnotes and glossary directly from text.

IBooks 2 Update is already available on the App Store for free. Also in the AppStore, you can download a demonstration of the first books of this format in algebra, physics, chemistry and other sciences. From myself I will add that the first samples look very high quality and interesting. It costs one such book $ 15.
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iBooks Author

New books are created using iBooks Author. The application interface is similar to the mix of solutions from iWork and iLife packages. As predicted, interactive books are now as simple to create as songs in Garageband. An interesting feature is the output of the book directly to the iPad during editing (something like debugging a book), so you can see how your work will look on the final device. The application is available now in the Mac AppStore and is also absolutely free.

iTunes U App

The third announcement at the presentation is also quite interesting, but completely useless in our country. Apple introduces the iTunes U App. Now teachers have the opportunity to create full-fledged interactive classes, including “handouts”, the necessary multimedia material, tests, recommendations and homework assignments. All these benefits of Western civilization are synchronized with iCloud safely. Already, such "giants" of educational activities as Yale University, MIT, Stanford and many others work with the new system. The application is also available absolutely free in the AppStore.