We are so excited about the fresh announcement from Apple about their new iBook authoring tool and what this means for education, educators, and most of all students. The textbook side has tremendous implications on everything from interactive learning to price. We’re not in the business of textbooks so we’ll leave those notes to others. We’re overwhelmingly excited about the platform and self-publishing piece and want to share about that.

Content Creation

The ability to create learning materials is revolutionary. “Anyone can create stunning, interactive books," said Phillip Schiller, CEO of Apple. Whether you have a Word document, or the ability to type, you can use the authoring widget to create a beautiful book. If you have a document the widget will scan the document, search for headings, chapters, etc. and create the basic layout of your new book.

We are buzzing about the ability to create manuals, teacher training modules, lessons, classroom activities, and anything else we can envision and have them live and ready for consumption on a reliable and widely used platform. No more printing, versioning, seeking out printers, or looking for a platform that hopefully works and doesn’t cost too much. Now we can publish things in the blink of an eye and have them ready for teachers to use immediately. This changes everything!

Question: What do you want to see first from us? Lessons, training manuals, or modules?

Interactivity

Templates, multi-touch widgets, photo, video – it’s all there for you. The ability to embed code, video, or other interactive pieces into your book is as easy as drag and drop. If you want to embed a video of a lesson or experiment right into your book you simply drag it into place and it becomes part of your book.

How many applications can you think of for this? I’m stuttering there are so many, and I want them to all come out at once! Whether it is a video of an experiment that highlights my point, or a short video of an insect for my biology lesson, or, or, or…the applications are endless. The really fun piece comes with the ability to embed code or games. No more switching between applications or devices to engage students – everything is in one place and built into a linear progression that students will love.

Availability

The platform to publish and the publishing itself are free, so the only limitations are having an iPad and the time to create. We’ve watched as students, teachers, and districts across the country have acquired iPads at a breakneck pace. Now the power of the device and platform will help world class training companies like Laying the Foundation deliver their materials to more teachers in a faster and more engaging way. The future looks brighter and better than ever!

Jared Brueckner, author of this post, is the VP of Business Development at LTF. To get in touch with him, send an email to jared@ltftraining.org.