Apple Attempts To Revolutionize Yet Another Industry: Education

TRANSCRIPT:

RAY HOLLISTER: This changes everything, again, or does it?

On Thursday, January 19th, Apple held a special press conference at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City where  Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, laid out Apple’s two-part vision for revolutionizing education. For the first part, Schiller explained the problems with textbooks.

PHIL SCHILLER: If you’re a child who has to move from class to class with 3 or 4 or 5 of these, it’s a bit cumbersome. They’re not interactive. They’re not searchable. An author can’t update the content once they’ve been handed out to the students. They’re just not the ideal, modern teaching tool.

RAY HOLLISTER: So, Schiller announced that to solve these problems Apple was…

PHIL SCHILLER: reinventing the textbook.

RAY HOLLISTER: Apple is reinventing the textbook with the introduction of two new apps: iBooks 2 and iBooks Author.

iBooks 2 brings a slew of new features to Apple’s iBooks app, including the ability to embed audio, video, and 3D models right into the book, making their otherwise fairly static electronic books highly interactive. These new textbooks are searchable, and they can have embedded glossaries that students can access just by tapping on a word. Also, Apple has added the ability to make highlights in the textbooks with just a swipe of the finger and the ability to add notes in the book just by tapping the screen. Additionally, one of the most impressive features is that using those highlights and notes, iBooks automatically creates study cards that the student can use to prepare for quizzes and tests.

iBooks Author is a new application that publishers, professors, teachers, and writers can use to create iBooks that can be submitted for free or for sale in Apple’s iBookstore. With iBooks Author anyone can create their own textbooks, cookbooks, history books, novels, non fiction,  or picture books. The software allows the user to drag and drop from Microsoft Word or Apple Pages documents, and it automatically formats the content into chapters and sections. Also, the author can easily add interactive photo galleries, videos, Keynote presentations and 3D objects using the “Multi-Touch widgets” that the software provides. Surprisingly, Apple has made this software available to everyone for free, however, it only works on Mac laptop and desktop computers.

For the second part of Apple’s vision for revolutionizing education Schiller passed the torch to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.

EDDY CUE: So, I want to tell you about the second thing we’re doing for education today, and that is we’re gonna help teachers reinvent the curriculum, and to do that I’d like to talk about iTunes U.

RAY HOLLISTER: iTunes U used to just be a section of the iTunes store where video and audio podcasts of college lectures could be downloaded. Now, Apple has turned iTunes U into a stand alone own app where students can get everything they need for a class all in one place. When student “enroll” in a class on the iTunes U app on their iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch they will find the syllabus and all the lectures, presentations, assignments, books and quizzes at their fingertips. Professors and teachers can make changes to the class as needed, and push notifications will go out to all the students on their iOS devices.

The elephant in the room that critics say Schiller did not realistically address in his presentation was the issue of cost. Printed high school textbooks currently tend to cost between $50 – $100, and to save money, most schools only replace them every 3 to 5 years. The high school textbooks that Apple introduced at the event were priced at $14.99. However, in order to use these textbooks effectively each student would have to have their own iPad. Starting at almost $500 a piece, issuing an iPad to each student would add a significant cost to public school district budgets that are already stretched thin from limited tax revenues.

However, at least one school here in Jacksonville is making the switch. University Christian, a private school, is going to require students to own an iPad 2 starting next school year. Students already spend about $700 a year for textbooks. So, now they’ll have a $500 iPad, plus iBooks at about $15 a piece, and the student’s overall cost ends up being about the same as before or less.

And, there’s hope on the horizon for cash strapped public school districts to join this education revolution as well. Each year, when Apple announces the latest version of devices, it almost always reduces the price of the prior year’s model at the same time. Based on Apple’s previous track record, the iPad 3 is expected to be announced in February, and at that time, it may also reduce the price of the iPad 2 to $399. This will put the “iCurriculum” at a price point that is closer to what many school districts are currently paying for textbooks which just might let Apple change everything, again.

 I’m Ray Hollister