Tag Archives: textbooks

November 5, 2012, 8:00 am

What Kind of Textbooks Do You (and Your Students) Want?

We’ve written several different posts over the years about textbooks, both printed and electronic.

Erin wrote about the pros and cons of using a Kindle in the classroom. Natalie shared some observations about students who use their cell phones as their e-readers. Amy experimented with ditching textbooks for a class and updated us on the results. Jason provided some advice about textbook costs and classroom ethos. I asked for some feedback and examples of how ProfHacker readers actually use electronic textbooks.

At least two trends in higher education and publishing are working together to make electronic textbooks more (potentially) attractive. First, the cost of a college degree has risen significantly over the last generation, and textbook prices have become a substantial percentage of that cost. Electronic textbooks hold out the promise of savings (although whether that promise …

January 19, 2012, 2:29 pm

Reflections on the Apple Education Event

By Kathleen Fitzpatrick

I had the opportunity to spend this morning with the Chronicle‘s Jeff Young, live-tweeting from the Apple Education announcement event. As you’ve undoubtedly heard by now, today’s announcement included:

the release of the iBooks 2 app for iOS, which allows for rich multimedia interactive textbooks;
the launch of the Textbooks category in the iBooks store, including an already-available collection of high-school texts priced at $14.99 and under;
the release of the iBooks Author application for Mac, which allows individuals to create textbooks (and other books — a note I’ll return to shortly) with the drag-and-drop ease of other Apple applications including Keynote;
the launch of the iTunes U app for iOS, which facilitates the distribution not just of the course-oriented podcasts of iTunes U’s existing service, but of fully coordinated curricula.

It was, for a small…