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Opinion | Schools should embrace Apple's new technology

J. Daniel Watkins, Columnist

Thursday, saw the announcement from Apple's "Education Event" of what could be incredibly valuable for students and educators everywhere. These things are iBooks 2 and iBooks Author.

The first replaces the existing iBooks app you'll find on your iPad. Its new additions, and rather remarkably, are textbooks and the ways in which a user can interact with them.

While currently only available for the high school level, the potential for any student is great. Instead of lugging around the heavy hardback, you've got it and the rest of your books digitally maintained in their full color and usefulness on an interactive touch screen.

Your notes can be taken and stored with it, and in place of merely images, one may find embedded movies. Previously, the format existed for magazines through Newsstand, but now that utility comes to education. While textbooks have been digitally available before, the new format and interaction defeats the limitations of simple .PDF files and creates a fuller platform.

The second of these, iBooks Author, is an application, which allows editing a textbook on the device. But, "the app isn't exactly designed for your mom to publish a interactive textbook of her vacation," per The Verge's Paul Miller.

In an educational environment, with dedicated computer science departments, it doesn't need to be. There are some snags in the development of more complicated components to the textbooks, but it still opens doors. Simple and practical editing (such as text, pictures, video) ideally becomes a breeze.

Unfortunately, it isn't all sunshine and multi-touch textbooks. There's a serious logistics issue: how do all these students get the hardware? Another reporter, Chris Ziegler, for The Verge tweeted that while it may be the future of textbooks, he's "just not convinced the U.S. Education System is ready." I think he's right, and that's a huge problem.

For all the touting of progress and advancement universities like to make, such as the new smart card access in dorms, the educational side does not see this progress. Even in classes that use heavy loads of PowerPoint slides, I'm looking at you BMZ, the professors don't want laptops in class. Instead, they suggest printing slides out and bringing them to class.

The wall, as I've mentioned in a previous piece, is the existing hesitation to allow technology in class for its potential as a distraction. Further, I've heard professors express taking offense to the possibility of a student reading something else in place of listening to their lecture.

In response I'll say this: Sorry professors, you may be brilliant, but you're getting paid. I'm not paying for your insecurities; I'm paying for credit hours. That's how the system works; I don't pay per class. You may have been here 30 years and you may be at the forefront of your field, but based on my time as a 21st century student, the observation you ought have made is that students learn in different ways.

And to deny any of them an efficient model, with little to no forward thinking, is a further disservice to student learning. Nobody needs to say that technology is advancing, but they need to ask why classrooms are not.

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Yet, there is cause for hope. The work done by Miami's own William Brinkman on AR (augmented reality) apps for book shelving is impressive. I encourage you to look it up, and think about the applications.

While it is to be used outside of the classroom, it solidifies the idea that people that are on campus can create tools for it. Homegrown advancement is undoubtedly a tool of great value, and now we know it exists.

So when Apple creates free tools to help advance this possibility, the potential grows even more. Imagine what it would be like for this professor and his students to sit down with iBooks Author and a professor from another department to craft their own specialized textbook. According to Engadget, " your average school teacher should have no trouble creating materials for pupils to a similar standard that a publishing house can."

Another obstacle to these digital textbook purchases could be on the publishers, but according to Apple the publishers of 90 percent of the market (Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) are onboard for $14.99 or less launch purchases. While currently only at the high school level, they will likely expand in both price and education level. It remains to be seen that one purchase will ever be updated to newer editions, or if one would be stuck at purchase edition.

The obvious hoorah is decreased pricing in textbooks. Behind that first hoorah comes the second; that when digital is the main platform, the constant consumption of paper and ink becomes obsolete.

With rising costs on every front, these opportunities are to be celebrated. And hopefully, taken advantage of sooner rather than later.