iPad in the classroom will soon be a reality. In a bid to ensure its dominance in the educational world and make more productive use of the iPad, Apple has announced updates to its iTunes U educational app. The update will help educators to create and manage course content directly on the iPad.
What This Means for Apple?
Apple can increase their brand value when they take their iPad to classroom. Young minds are easily impressionable and exposing the young minds to this new piece of technology will surely have its benefits.
What Does The Update Do?
With the update, you can have full course correction abilities. You can even pull in content and other learning materials from Apple’s other products including iWork, iBooks and other educational apps available for iPad.
Teachers can also have their own photos and videos in the course, which they can insert by taking a photo or video with the iPad’s camera. This will help teachers add in locally relevant classroom content. In a way, this is Apple’s way of selling more iPad’s to schools.
Students have it easier too. Students can directly ask questions from their tablet with the help of a feature called Discussions. Students can also follow classroom conversations enabling learning, as Apple puts it, to ‘be more personalized’.
It should be remembered that the U app was launched back in 2012 for the iPad. Before that the iTunes U educational portal was accessible through the iPhones. In 2012, Apple had introduced the ability to create eBooks and this is the first major update since then and one that is sure to fuel the iOS ecosystem further.
The Mobile Apps Education Sphere
Educational apps are on the rise and there is a reason. There are the likes of Quipper that makes course management tools and Gojimo which also offers mobile leaning tools. Startups are interested in this niche and so is Apple. It’s not just Apple who is euphoric about the prospects of educational apps. Amazon has been aggressively promoting the educational use of its Kindle Fire tablets for some time now as well. Amazon tablets are cheaper to buy and a reason Apple may be worried.
With the update, educators can create iTunes U courses in as many as 69 countries. The courses thus created can be available in as many as 155 countries through the iTunes U app. Apple also stated recently that its iBooks Author app has been used to create as many as 30,000 Multi-Touch books, another testimony to the popularity of educational apps.
