According to an article from The Wall Street Journal, McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt K-12, Pearson, and Kaplan Publishing are all working with ScrollMotion to turn their textbooks and test-prep guides into applications for the iPad. The ScrollMotion reader differs from Stanza and other e-book applications because each book is a stand-alone application that uses ScrollMotion’s Iceberg reader and each book retains the pagination of the print book. The applications will enhance the reading experience by allowing students to play videos, highlight text, record lectures, take notes, search the text, and participate in interactive quizzes.
At last week’s unveiling of the iPad, details about how the device could be used for education were not provided. According to the WSJ article, people familiar with the situation say that education was one of the focal points of discussion during the iPad development. At the Apple event, Steve Jobs did confirm that publishers such as Penguin, Harper-Collins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette Book Group have signed on to provide e-books through a new Apple app called iBooks. It is not clear if textbooks will also be offered through the iBooks app.
