The iPad is creating a revolution in the way education is imparted in almost all genres. And here is something that will make the iPad a must-have device for all students, rendering it indespensible: interactive textbooks. The iPad is already the best device you can have with you during college lectures and is more portable and compact than a laptop while also having a battery that keeps going on and on.
Now add to this the efforts of a start up company named ‘Inkling’ that intends to introduce e-textbooks meant to be used on the iPad and which promise to be a whole new experience than the conventional e-books that are nothing more than just digital versions of the the traditional paper books.
How? Inkling, which incidentally is the brainchild of an ex-Apple employee, explains this by saying their e-textbooks will be highly interactive to the extent that the reader is in a position to make the best of the iPad’s multimedia capabilities, the vibrant color screen, video and Internet connectivity along with the superbly responsive touchscreen interface.
However, there will be just four titles from McGraw-Hill that Inkling has planned to come up with in the initial stages, dealing with the subjects of biology, economics, marketing, and psychology. Prices as announced stand at $3.99 for a single chapter with the cost of the entire interactive digital textbook starting at $84.99. The e-textbooks will be made available at the iTunes App Store where there will be attractive introductory price offers valid for a limited time period during which the e-textbooks will come for $69.99 for the entire book or $2.99 for a single chapter.
The news comes on the back of another report that will be sweet honey for scholars. CourseSmart, the e-textbook provider, has come up with an iPad app that will allow the students to carry all of their textbooks on the iPad. So it comes down to carrying just the tablet to their school instead of lugging around an entire backpack filled with paper books. It can be mentioned here that CourseSmart is already into selling e-books that can be used on laptops or iPhones.
The core advantage of the CourceSmart app is that the app includes a bookshelf, sticky-notes for scrawling onto pages, along with a clean thumbnail navigator that allows for quick and easy navigation and search. Also, not only does the app come free, a great advantage of the app is that if you ever loose your iPad, you can still have full access to all your texts and notes by logging in again from a different device.
So all these can be reason enough for parents to buy an iPad for their kids.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
