Today's Wall Street Journal carries an article by Jeff Tachtenberg and Yukari Kane titled 'Textbook Firms Ink E-Deals for iPad'. While it is widely known that major textbook publishers are adapting their texts for the electronic format, the intoduction of iPad has given that trend a further push - or so it seems from this article.
McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson Education, Kaplan are all on the bandwagon already.
Compass Intelligence, a market research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz., estimates that technology spending in the U.S. educational market could grow to $61.9 billion in 2013, from $47.6 billion in 2008.
Apple is known to enjoy an edge in the educational sector because of its Macintosh, and already has a presence in educational content through iTunes U.
According to the authors, publishers will be interested in iPad apps that allow the ability to play video, highlight text, record lectures, take notes, search text and take quizzes.
The message of this article resonates with another article in Business Week that I posted earlier on this blog.
This could be a step towards learning completely through ebooks and not paper books. Just as laptops have become the norm for work and on the go. Education too will move in that direction where studies, exams and information will be done virtually.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to look forward to, and difficult to predict. On one hand, Apple is keeping Flash and probably Microsoft Office away from the iPad -- and on the other hand, it's trying to rope in so much more. How Apple pulls this off is going to be a story that's more than just the iPad!
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