Official: Apple Education Event on for January 19th in NYC!

Very sucky.  And, frankly, I don't know how the exclusivity function will fly - and some places may contest that point on legal grounds.   

Many state schools offer state funding programs which help pay for things like books, etc.   But the concept of "exclusive agreement" for publication significantly messes with the way that state resources that help fund those programs go.   And return of funding for work product published by a university may need to be reviewed as well; IE, a professor publishing a book from a university is good for the university, true.   But having it as a required text wherein they pocket the revenue stream may not be something the university - or the state - wants to get involved in.

 

I'm very interested in how this all plays out.   I think digital texts are the future, but I think there are a lot of complicated issues here that aren't addressed.

Holy cow, another big factor may be the mb weight of these things:

 

 

http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/19/apples-ibooks-2-e-textbooks-pack-tons-of-info-take-up-tons-of/#disqus_thread

 

2.77Gb a book?   Is apple planning to roll out a 128Gb iPad3?

Quote:

Yeah, in a perfect world Apple would release this amazing book creation software, for free, and make it compatible with all of its competitors platforms.  I hope you recognize why that world doesn't exist.

 

The above linked Apple Support doc clearly states you can distribute outside the iBookstore.  Probably someone will write a utility converting the .iBook format to ePub.

 

As for distribution through the iBookstore, please find me a publisher/store that will let you keep 70% of each *retail* sale.  This is a GREAT deal for authors -- indeed an absolutely unprecedented one.  

Quote:

Hopefully they are -- although even at 20 textbooks per year (highly unlikely) a 64GB iPad will suffice.

Edited by Ted Todorov - 1/19/12 at 11:22am

A good way for kids to convince their parents they NEED and iPad for school, of course. Like the time I convinced my parents to get me a Queen size bed in college because my twin bed didn't have enough room to study, when in fact i didn't have enough room to sleep with girlfriend in the twin bed. Parents are so gullible when it comes to the needs of studying

I think there is real value in kids reading, especially in their younger years. Interactive textbooks will not help, and in fact, will probably hurt kids reading habits. The "educators" will love it of course because it means spending a lot more money. Business wise, it should be great for Apple.

 

-Keith

I've seen many studies that get kids more involved in learning activities when they are on tablet devices, rather than looking at a book. Agreed, should be good for Apple. Now they need to get to releasing iPhone 5 info!

Sam,

What the techcrunch author doesn't seem to realize is that the current education system simply DOES NOT WORK!
It's outdated, with TONS of jaded bureaucrats hampering education at every level just to cover their asses. My son is a 16 year old 11th grade high school student and I can see firsthand how difficult today's educational environment is.

It's just like the healthcare field of which I'm a part of (as a surgeon). We used to be a great nation in terms of healthcare and education, but now we are at the bottom of the 30 top industrial nations in the world.

It's time to open up our minds to new solutions, and at least Apple is trying to help (and if they get to increase their profits in the process.... more power to them --- at least they are doing something beyond complaining).

If RAF (Robert A. Fowkes) were alive today I believe he would have been thrilled by today's Apple event.

As someone I knew used to say..... "DON'T BRING ME THE PROBLEMS.... BRING ME THE SOLUTIONS !"

Respectfully stepping down from my soapbox,

Raul

Just my thoughts:

 

Limiting it so you can only sell through there, and not your website or on your own is a bad deal; it also limits formats, etc.   This is, IMHO, no good.

 

In regards to the claim "find me somewhere else that lets you keep 70% of the revenue"   In this one, single instance.. that is a problem in and of itself.   Many of these book publishers (specifically texts) receive compensatory funding from states and they receive special tax incentives, etc.    So, let's say you say "well, it's all apple ipad, and now the author keeps 70%"   Wait.. the author isn't the one who should be getting 70%.   In the case of a university, many universities have clauses that dictate some of that needs to flow to them; in the case of a compiled book, like a general studies text, some of that funding is underwritten by a co-op to manage the research/etc.  

 

Suddenly saying "we're going direct" is like telling Universities and states to go jump in a lake with the tax revenue they've pumped in ;)   I'm not sure how they will feel about that.

 

I admit, I'm someone who kept almost every one of my college texts.   I sold a few, but a large number I kept.   I can't imagine keeping six years worth of texts in an iPad or in any format.. it's not like a class has "one" text; several classes I was in, especially historical and literary, had numerous.

It's the direction this is going, but having some sort of sell-through and content delivery exclusivity seems like a very bad deal for the taxpayers who invested in the development and support of the university profs/etc. who are providing.

 

I have seen those as well. However, they do not look at the bigger picture, at least the ones I have seen. They focus on the short term, immediate benefit. Yes students learn quicker but how does that affect the student in the long run in areas such as attention span and the ability concentrate.

 

The other issue is the environment of how these studies were conducted, on students that started reading in a more traditional environment. The only real meaningful way to conduct such a study would be to eliminate, or nearly so, non-interactive reading from a child's learning experience right from the start and then collect data on the long term effects of such an environment. 

 

It is possible that we might start creating generations of adults with attention spans of a gnat that can't concentrate for more than 60 seconds. There has already been some work indicating the negative affect on attention span/ability to concentrate on people that read a lot on the web with stories that have links, animated ads, etc.

 

Hopefully, these concerns will turn out to be fales. Either way, I guess we are going to find out.

 

-Keith

 

 

 

Entire Stream of today's event here

 

Thank You, Sam Posten, for maintaining this thread

Thinking about the graphics, charts, and potential video features for a classic physics text like Halliday & Resnick's Fundamentals of Physics, I can imagine a digital form being quite large. But is this a problem? I don't think so. An engineering student would need maybe five books a semester? Even if they all max out at 2.77 GB, that's 13 GB total, so a student's books would all fit on an entry model iPad. Get the 32 GB iPad and there's room for Angry Birds between classes. 

Matt, I certainly see that in many cases the 70% will have to split up between various people, companies, institutions, etc. -- but that isn't Apple's problem, and again the 70% is the best deal going.  You sure won't get a better deal from Amazon.  Before Apple got in the game Amazon was offering a 70-30 split going the other way -- they kept the 70% for Kindle publications.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is, the smaller fry you are the better this deal is -- free tools, no upfront costs, a very fair split.  It is only the biggest of the big fish who can hope to end up with more than 70% by distributing on their own. 

I'm not going to get involved with the legalities and splits, etc.

 

I am going to just give an opinion on what I have just seen.

 

 

 

Absolutely, he would.

 

I just finished watching the hour video presentation and I am speechless.

 

Apple is once again changing the world.  To see what they are doing for education

is just mind boggling.  To put affordable books on affordable devices in every

classroom -- to engage students like never before so that they actually want to

learn -- is a real accomplishment.

 

Furthermore, Apple is practically giving everything away for free including

software to create books and University courses that (from what I can see)

won't cost anyone a dime to use through iTunes U.

 

(that is unless I missed something)

 

I am just completely amazed at what Apple has accomplished and for the

fact that it doesn't seem they are trying to put profit ahead of education. 

Ron,

I agree with you 100%.
Thanks for including my RAF quote.... it's just that while I watched the presentation his memory just popped in my mind. I truly believe he would have been extatic with today's announcement.
I really believe that Apple's announcement today for education is equal (if not greater) than what iTunes did to the music industry many years ago.

Raul

 

 

 

 

30 years ago, we were going to have a TV on every desk: that would engage students and increase their education opportunities. 20 years ago, a computer on every desk. Then a laptop for every student. Last year an iPad for every student. Now an iBooks 2. Each time, it will engage, enhance, etc. And yet everyone complains that the system gets worse.

 

And this won't make books better. If the science books are bad in print, then they'll be bad in digital.

 

Hopefully this will reduce the weight (literally, the sheer mass of books), decrease cost, make source materials more easily searched...but now kids will be saddled with even more reading from LCD screens rather than the (for some) easier to read print.

 

 

 

And in my experience, a great lecturer with a blackboard coupled with good homework and hard work beats bad technology every day.

 

This is cool. But it's also window dressing for education.

I have three wishes with regards to this:
1) I could take an iPad to work

2) I could buy my academic texts in this new system

3) iBooks could integrate with Wolfram Alpha for live equations and graphs

 

To have "Optics" by Hecht or "Principles of Optics" by Born and Wolf digitally live and calculable would be very useful at times. Fill in your technical degree and books as you will :)

Podcasts "Ihnatko Almanac" and "Hypercritical" had some decent thoughts on the affair.

 

I liked Siracusa's closing comments on how Apple has completely ignored its own history and touted this as a technological panacea to educational woes :)