Yesterday’s announcement by Apple about iBooks2 wasn’t exactly the type of earth shaking paradigm shift that I was hoping for. I’m sure that it is going to have a big impact on education. The same way YouTube has turned millions of people into videographers iBooks Author, Apple’s interactive book designer, will allow teachers, students, or anybody to create interactive curriculum for the iPad. Get an ISBN and you can sell your interactive curriculum through iBooks2.

I would love to turn lessons into interactive curriculum that I could push to students’ iPads. Sounds great. However, I wasn’t waiting for Apple to provide this type of tool. Last week I found a pretty good app for creating content for the iPad. Apple’s iBook Author is a much more complete offering with plenty of features that make it a superior product, but this really wasn’t what I was waiting for. This was going to happen with or without Apple providing it.

I’m waiting for Apple to provide classroom management tools. An easy way to display any students iPad on a projector, easily push content to a classroom of devices, take attendance, quizzes, organize classroom discussions (improved tweetdeck), send notes from the SmartBoard to the devices. I wasn’t really expecting any of this yesterday as the focus was going to be about textbooks, but I was hoping. I’m most dissappointed that Apple still hasn’t really addressed the licensing of content for schools. They need to give schools a better way to license school curriculum on student devices. We need site licenses. We need flexibility. Not iTunes cards.

The big shocker from yesterday was the $15 cap on high school textbooks. This is where Apple is throwing its weight around and going to change education. If they are able to get textbook publishers to provide high school textbooks for $15 digitally more schools are going to fast track digital device adoption. Our textbooks average $75 a class. That turns into a $300 savings per student each year. That alone covers the cost of the device if the student uses the device for two or more years. Once they have the HS students indoctrinated the colleges will have to follow suit. Students growing up in a digital environment will expect the same when they move on to college. In addition, it would be difficult for students to succeed if their college solely taught with traditional textbooks after 4 years of classrooms using digital devices.

So the day did end up being a pretty big announcement that will have an impact on the future of education and the implementation of devices. It does make me wonder what an industry as big and profitable as textbook publishers feel about Apple telling them what they can charge for their product.

A couple of links to news stories about yesterday’s event:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/01/apple-announces-ibooks-2-to-reinvent-textbooks.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57362722-17/ibooks-2-was-steve-jobs-vision-textbook-publisher-says/

The same institution that brought us GNU and Free Software Foundation is going to bring free quality education to the Internet in the spring of 2012. MIT is building an online learning environment that will be available to anyone that is interested and has a connection to the Internet. MITx is going to award certificates to those that demonstrate a mastery of the skills offered in the courses. There may be fees associated with some of the courses, but the idea is to provide an affordable online education. Welcome to OPEN EDUCATION.

Stanford has been posting lectures on iTunesU since 2005 and just celebrated their 40 millionth download. In addition to quality lectures MITx will provide course materials and a certificate without having to go through any type of admission process. It makes me wonder what Apple’s big textbook announcement will be at the end of this month in New York. Did MIT announce MITx now to try and steal some of Apple’s thunder? Is iTunesU going to be changing their model of just providing podcasts and videos of lectures? Is Apple going to become an accredited degree granting institution?

If you don’t think that we are experiencing a major change in education take a look at the textbook publishers. When I was in college they were the 400 pound gorilla that directed the educational process. That industry is scrambling to figure out how they are going to fit in with the new model of education. Teachers no longer want entire textbooks they want pieces of them. Today’s curriculum is comprised of a few chapters and problems from a textbook, primary sources, videos, interactive websites, apps, and a multitude of digital resources. Educators have the ability to customize their curriculum. Why be locked into the sequence and style of teaching offered by a single textbook? Sure, I liked my math textbook and it was great to have as a guide the first few years of teaching. That was how I was taught, it was comfortable. However, each year I taught pre-algebra I found myself using projects and resources outside of the textbook that were much more effective.

Remember when students realized that they didn’t have to wait for the teacher to give them the answers. They could access that information themselves whenever they wanted it. Students are now expected to have that information available at all times through some device that they are carrying around with them. If a student sits through a lecture and really doesn’t get it they now have options. They can go online that night and watch a professor from a top college present on that same topic.

Now MITx is going to eliminate the institutions last piece of leverage - certification. Not sure what would happen if a student walked into an Introduction to Computer Science class and showed the teacher the certificates from MITx indicating that they had completed a years worth of CS coursework from MIT over the summer. That day is coming. Students are being empowered to take complete control over their education.