I Prefer Tablets

As Apple’s Phil Schiller noted in his speech, “Education is deep in our DNA.” That’s difficult not to agree with him, and after such events we (ordinary mortals) understand Apple’s and other tech giants’ goals. I mean I have never thought the educational market may be the axis the tech manufacturers will plan to build their future.

The first novelty that was introduced us was a brand new iBooks 2 and a brand new textbook experience for the iPad. This feature has been made to improve the learning process—as you know the text book has a great content, but it is the only advantage it can offer students. Now Apple is trying to change the traditional perceives of the world. It is mainly expressed in gathering all the needed information in one place, “cloudy” storages and portability. This is why the text books can’t serve students anymore. The iPad is one of the most popular portable devices in the world and iBooks 2 will transform into the best educational tool saving information that will be portable, durable, interactive, searchable.

This will help the students to have all necessary books and other data at hand, explore them any time, look at the images and graphics more closely, share any document on iClouds and access other files.

Secondly, Apple created iBook Author, which is the next step forward. It allows users to create their own books. The app looks like Keynote mixed with Pages, so users wouldn’t have difficulties while working. Plus, it has all necessary tools; if you have done something custom you can get to the internet; there is a perfect glossary tool that is very simple in use; preview option will allow you see what you have done before publishing and so on.

All in all, people may think such apps must cost hundred dollars, but Apple will offer it for free and may be they will be the key features of the iPad 3 (though let’s don’t forget about the quad-core processor).

Finally, Apple has developed a special tool for teacher, the iTunes U app. This will help teachers everything they want. With the help of iTunes U teachers will be able to post messages to their class and give assignments. The students can view the content by streaming or downloading it.

Well, all these apps are available at Mac Store for free and will be free for the users of iPad, but all three novelties are in beta version and the final products are not available yet. Although I think this is quite enough for beta version.

photo credit by The Verge

You can watch the Apple Education Event on Apple.com