January 19, 2012 will actually be remembered as a BIG-BIG day for Global Education – a day when textbooks were reinvented. Apple Inc. known for their path-breaking contribution to the overall transformation of social fragment of society in the greater sense has opened up the path to interactive education at the very basic level in educational institutions – The Textbooks in the form of iBooks 2 for iPad.

Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing in his own words quotes the spirit of the announcement:
“Education is deep in Apple’s DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet. With 1.5 million iPads already in use in education institutions, including over 1,000 one-to-one deployments, iPad is rapidly being adopted by schools across the US and around the world. Now with iBooks 2 for iPad, students have a more dynamic, engaging and truly interactive way to read and learn, using the device they already love.”
Learning is always believed to be a continuous process and imbibing knowledge is meant to be an experience rather than an exercise.Learning is meant to be enjoyed and knowledge explored; however, many a times the fun of learning gets lost under the weight and monotony of the Textbooks. It can be expected that Apple’s iBooks 2 for iPad will usher a new beginning to the way education – learning and knowledge-sharing shall be perceived in days to come.
iBooks 2 for iPad features iBooks textbooks that are dynamic, interactive and highly engaging – loaded with elegant, full-screen textbooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, unrivaled navigation and much more. Moreover, iBooks textbooks can be constantly updated with the latest research and statistics; and most importantly it will do away with Textbooks weighing down a backpack.
Terry McGraw, Chairman and CEO of McGraw Hill sums up the significance of Apple’s education announcement as a glorious part of history in the making. He says, “Digitization of education is going to be the opportunity of the century”. While Pearsons agree that iBooks 2 for iPad replacing Textbooks will “make students much more interested and if it stimulates curiosity, you got the spark for learning”.
Interestingly, leading education services companies including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson will work towards compiling and delivering educational titles on the iBookstore with most priced at $14.99 or less. Besides that, an innovative free authoring tool – iBooks Author has been made available today. So, if you own a Mac, you too can create stunning iBooks textbooks. Isn’t it exciting?
The new iBooks 2 app is available today as a free download from the App Store. Apple Inc. and the publishers along with educators, who have contributed to the creation of this highly innovative new iBooks 2 app, will make way for students to learn, explore and experience their curriculum in more efficient and effective ways than ever before.

- Fast, fluid navigation, easy highlighting and note-taking, searching and definitions, plus lesson reviews and study cards.
- iBooks Author is also available today as a free download from the Mac App Store and lets anyone with a Mac create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books and more, and publish them to Apple’s iBookstore.
- Authors and publishers of any size can start creating with Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts.
- iBooks Author lets you add your own text and images by simply dragging and dropping, and with the Multi-Touch widgets you can easily add interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations and 3D objects.
- Students using iBooks 2 for iPad will have access to the world’s largest catalog of free educational content.
- Access to over 20,000 education apps at their fingertips and hundreds of thousands of books in the iBookstore – that can be used in their school curriculum, including Social Studies, Science, Mathematics or novels for English.

How do you think iBooks 2 for iPad will help evolve a new educational renaissance in the work? How do you perceive the success of interactive textbooks to ‘conventional hardback Textbooks’? Please do share with us your thoughts and views. We’d like Apple to hear you! Read More