Textbooks moving to electronic versions

After revolutionizing the way we listen to music, watch movies and use mobile phones, Apple has announced that its next goal is to make its mark on the educational spectrum.

The company held an "education event" at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on Jan. 19 to unveil its solutions to improve the quality of education for students. Apple has launched the iBooks 2 application, a textbook authoring platform called iBook Author and an iTunes U application.

The iBooks 2 app was designed to bring textbooks to the iPad and will conveniently allow students to purchase and read their chapters from their screens.

Apple is also catering to educators and smaller publishers by giving them the opportunity to create and sell their books in the iBookstore.

The iTunes U app is a channel designed to help both educators and students manage their classes. The application will feature panes for professors and students to manage their coursework, complete and see assignments, share class notes and more.

"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 U.S. and around the world," said Philip Schiller, one of Apple's senior vice presidents.

Apple is not alone in its quest to reinvent textbooks. With the prices of physical, printed books increasing every year, publishing companies like McGraw-Hill Education have taken to distributing electronic versions of their texts called e-books. Because e-books are now in demand, e-reader devices such as Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook are also rising in popularity.

"I think e-books are good alternatives for textbooks because they are more accessible and you can easily find your subject matter," neuroscience major Julie Fisel said. "The fact that they are cheaper is a good factor, too. I think Apple should be careful with monopolizing everything in the industry, but it's good that they're expanding to education."

It may take some time, however, for e-books to completely replace bound books. Some students think that the reading experience is different on an e-reader and still prefer flipping through pages to swiping a screen.

"I'm willing to pay more money to own my books," art major Jenna Barrois said. "I can visualize and learn from what I'm reading better if I can physically highlight and underline things on pages, compared to looking at a screen."

Whether more students choose to abandon their traditional textbooks or not, e-books have revolutionized both the publishing and reading worlds and have proven to be good alternatives for students on a budget. In regard to Apple's efforts, many people have applauded the company for stepping up and assisting students and educators through their innovative ways of incorporating modern technology with the classroom.