e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Apple-Inc.

  • Apple and Textbooks, Part 2: Is There a Class In This Text?

    When Apple announced both the release of their iBooks 2 and upgrades to iTunes University, I was curious to see what kind of integration they had between the two. If you do a web search on the subject, you will find plenty of articles that tell you that iBooks textbooks “fully integrate with” iTunes U—but without providing any details. What does that mean?

    From what I can tell, it means that you can put a deep link from iTunes U to a specific page in an iBook. That’s what “fully integrates” means. What it apparently doesn’t mean is the ability to insert iTunes U content directly into the book via an iFrame or some other means. Technically, speaking, it would have been easy for them to do this. The iBook format is essentially EPUB. It’s HTML, CSS, and Javascript. A collection of web pages. They even have explicit support for widgets. It wouldn’t have been hard at all for them to create an iTunes U widget. But they didn’t go there. I think that omission, while not a huge deal in and of itself, is deeply revealing about the limits of Apple’s vision about textbooks and education.

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  • Apple and Textbooks, Part 1: The War on Paper

    Unsurprisingly, there has been a lot of good coverage of the Apple announcements already. I’m partial to Phil Hill’s pre- and post-announcement write-ups here at e-Literate as well as Audrey Watters’ analysis at Hack Education. Nevertheless, I do think there are a few more things that can be said about the announcement.

    From a functional perspective, there really isn’t anything new about the e-textbooks that Apple is touting. Pretty much all of the functionality can be found in one, several, or even all of the entrants in the product category that I have occasionally referred to as “nextbooks,” e.g., Inkling, Kno, MIYO, DynamicBooks, and my own employer’s MindTap product. In fact, as I’ll go into in a later post, Apple’s entrants are missing some features that are critical to this product category. But the facts of the product announcement alone don’t tell the whole story. I don’t think you can really tease out the full impact without understanding the company’s commercial goals—particularly when the company is Apple, which has a history of moving markets in ways that other companies can only dream of. In the next couple of posts, I’m going to tease out what I believe Apple is trying to accomplish for itself, and then use that context to explore where their efforts are likely to have progressive effects on education and where there are gaps or problems.

    Let’s start with Apple’s prime motivation. They want to kill paper.

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  • Why OER Advocates Should Be Happy About the iPad

    I got some comments on my Blackboard iPad post specifically regarding the push toward native—and therefore proprietary—apps and away from standards-based web apps. This concern is just one example of a constellation of complaints about how Apple is too closed. I understand those complaints and am not going to argue with them here. But whether you love Apple or hate them, whether you will buy an iPad or not, I think it’s clearly the case that the iPad’s success will increase adoption of Open Educational Resources.

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  • iPhone U

    According to Apple rumor site AppleInsider (which has a good reputation for accuracy as far as these things go), Apple is getting ready to launch a pilot of something called iPhone U with Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale, and Abilene Christian University (ACU). (“One of these things is not like the other, One of these things is not quite the same….”) Sounds like a combination of iPhones/iPod Touches for all students with a beefed up and more integrated version of iTunes U. ACU is apparently first out of the gate with a full-scale program, providing iPod Touches to all students. According to AppleInsider:

    “At ACU — the first university in the nation to provide these cutting-edge media devices to its incoming class — freshmen will use the iPhones or iPod Touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances,” the university said in a statement.

    In addition to those functions, ACU said it has already developed more than 15 other useful web applications for use on the Apple devices as part of its vision to “Connect” every student, faculty, and staff member. In a subsequent posting to its mobile learning website, the school offered a demonstration video portraying fictional, yet conceivable day-in-the-life account that highlights some of the potential benefits of its ideal mobile wireless environment.

    This has the potential to be disruptive in a bunch of ways. The demonstration video is well worth watching.

  • eBooks on the iPod Getting Closer?

    A while back, I predicted that the logical conclusion of the whole iTunes U thing would be eBooks on an iPod. It would, I think, dramatically impact the textbook market (for the better) and open up all kinds of opportunities for alternative content (including free/libre content). Well, Engadget claims that the day is nearing:

    We tend to field a lot of inside information here at Engadget HQ, but we’ve gotten not one, but two bits from separate, trustworthy insiders that Apple’s not satisfied merely vending Audible’s books-on-digital-audio solution. With the iRex iLiad and Sony PRS-500 Portable Reader both right around the corner, is it possible the next iPod might catch the eBook bug? We’d say the possibility is very real, since according to a source at a major publishing house, they were just ordered to archive all their manuscripts — every single one — and send them over to Apple’s Cupertino HQ. A separate trusted source let us know that the next iPod will have a substantial amount of screen real estate (as we’d all suspected), as well as a book reading mode that pumps up the contrast and drops into monochrome for easy reading. It’s no e-ink, sure, but a widescreen iPod would be well suited for the purpose, and according to our source, the books you’d buy (presumably through iTunes) won’t have an expiration — kind of like Apple-bought music, as well, but contradictory to the movie rental scheme we’ve heard rumored.

    If Apple does this, it will bring eBooks (finally!) into the mainstream very quickly. And just as importantly, it creates an instant commodity distribution mechanism via iTMS/iTunes U.

    I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

  • What I'd Like to See Next in iTunes University

    Update: Although you can’t copy and paste the podcatching URL from the iTunes client, it is apparently possible to expose the podcatching URL from the administration interface. I have no direct information about why this is so. However, it is consistent with Apple’s general approach to DRM. It may be that by making it easy for the producer to expose the URL but inconvenient for the consumer to do so without help from the producer, they are trying to strike a balance that gives iTunes U a “soft” DRM capability without resorting to encryption. But that’s just a guess.

    This is part 6 of a series of posts documenting a vist to Apple headquarters in February, 2005. For the full series, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5. and part 6.

    As you can probably tell from my last few posts, I’m pretty jazzed about the potential of iTunes U. But that doesn’t mean that I think the first version is perfect by any means. Here’s what I’d like to see from Apple going forward: (more…)

  • Why iTunes University is a Game Changer

    This is part 5 of a series of posts documenting a vist to Apple headquarters in February, 2005. For the full series, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.

    In my last post, I made the case that we should feel reasonably safe taking Apple at their word when they say that they want to keep iTunes U free and free from lock-in for the long-term. As far as I can tell, it’s not evil. In this post, I’m going to argue that it is, in fact, a force for good-good for the evolution of learning environments, good for the textbook market, and good for expanding the horizons of digitally-enhanced teaching and learning interactions. (more…)