GigaOM » Apple

New U.S. iPad activations move inland

Erica Ogg — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:00:40 +0000

Two months after the new iPad’s debut in the U.S, a study shows that the device is beginning to appear in a wider geographic footprint beyond mainly wealthier, coastal states. Last month Apple’s new iPad accounted for 9 percent of all iPad activations, and this month it’s up to 13.5 percent, according to new data from Chitika Insights published Thursday.

Similar to last month, Hawaii and California lead in new iPad activations, accounting for nearly 18 and 16 percent, respectively. But Nebraska is a surprise No. 3. A big part of that isn’t due to your regular gadget consumers, but one of the state’s public education initiatives, which includes a 1-to-1 iPad program for students, according to the report.

You can see the other top seven states (and a district) for new iPad activations in May in the chart below:

Credit: Chitika Insights

But it’s not just Nebraska. There are other mainly rural — and less populated — states whose citizens are also scooping up the latest iPad. According to Chitika:

Nebraska’s adoption numbers in this second month, in addition to high adoption rates in states like Virginia, West Virginia and Alabama, indicate that rural states cannot be broadly labeled as technology laggards. Those residents are now pushing technology trends, often in greater numbers than their East and West-coast counterparts, rather than following them.

This kind of trend is exactly what needs to happen for Apple to continue to grow its customer base. The company can’t just sell new iPhones and iPads every year or every other year to the same early adopter types. By expanding through new industries — education, healthcare, transportation, etc. — the iPad is bringing Apple as a company into new territories that the Mac, at least at this stage in its life, never could.

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What schools need to know about OS X Mountain Lion

Weldon Dodd — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:45:19 +0000

It’s a little early — OK, more than a little — to draw conclusions on just how OS X Mountain Lion from Apple might impact schools that use Macs. Still, Apple’s overview of their new desktop operating system makes such a strong connection to features borrowed from iOS, the operating system of the iPhone and iPad, that it’s a good idea to consider how Macs might fare in school environments where the iPad is now so popular that it is outselling the Mac. Many districts are rolling out iPad 1-to-1 programs (one iPad per student) where most, if not all, computing is done on iPads. By more closely integrating with iOS, OS X Mountain Lion should help in schools that make heavy use of iPads and still want to use Macs. Of the key features announced for the forthcoming Mountain Lion last week, a few technologies have significance for schools — some good, and some maybe bad.

iCloud support is significant because it potentially reduces the IT infrastructure needed for shared document storage and backup of documents and device settings. Students will be able to share documents created on the iPad with a Mac, or even share back and forth. There are a few caveats, of course. You’ll need software for both platforms that can work with the same document. The iWork bundle is an example of software that can work on the same documents on both iPad and Mac. This could be great for situations where students have iPads but might need to hop on a computer to quickly paste in an image or chart created on the Mac. The downside to all this is that Apple didn’t really design iCloud for a shared computing environment like a school, so you’ll have to figure out how to allow access in your Mac lab. If we’re lucky, there might be something like the old iDisk where you could temporarily access a user’s documents, but I’ll assume that each student will need their own user account on the Mac to make the integration work. It could be great for a Bring Your Own Device program where students can bring their own iPad and Macs are available in the school lab.

Gatekeeper is a new feature of OS X Mountain Lion that gives users more control over running only software downloaded from the Apple-run Mac App Store, software that has been signed by a registered developer (so you know the source), or any software at all. Gatekeeper sounds like it could be good for schools because it provides some restrictions against running untrusted software, but I suspect that most will continue to lock down apps by only allowing approved software from a centrally managed white list. Still, I like the possibility of a middle ground where non-IT folks could install the software they need for a class, or even just a certain unit for a few weeks, as long as it is from the App Store or signed by a registered developer. It would certainly help teachers avoid malware, but it doesn’t do much on its own to prevent kids from installing time wasters and games. You’ll still need to use admin accounts, permissions and profile manager or some other tool for that.

Notes looks like it could be a great research tool and organizer for students working on a project. I like the idea of students collecting notes on their iPad and then pulling them together to write a paper or a presentation on the Mac. Of course, I’m still hoping that iCloud syncing of notes will be workable in schools. Reminders, a simple to-do list for both iOS and OS X, seems to fit right in with Notes and could definitely be useful, but only when integrated with iCloud syncing so students can make notes to themselves when working in the Mac lab and then pick up those notes and reminders on their iPad later.

Share Sheets, Twitter, Notifications, Messages and Game Center are probably not on the top of the list for pedagogically sound uses of Macs in school, but I’m sure some creative teacher will surprise me. I suspect that most schools will be fighting with their IT departments to even allow network access to Twitter, let alone allow the students to access those features on the desktop. Messages, the new version of the iChat instant messaging application, could be a nightmare in some situations, especially since it allows for sending messages to iPhones, much like texting from the computer to a friend with an iPhone. Just one more thing to watch out for, I guess.

Which brings us to the end of line with AirPlay Mirroring. Sweet, sweet AirPlay. AirPlay Mirroring allows you to display your screen to an Apple TV hooked up to a projector or a big TV in the classroom. Airplay Mirroring is going to be great for schools that are deploying an iPad 1-to-1 program. Not because we don’t have ways to hook up computers and iPads to TVs and projectors now, but because there will be a uniform method to do so that works across iOS devices and Mac computers that doesn’t require a variety of easily lost or misplaced adapters and cables. It also helps that this uniform method is wireless and relies only on a $99 Apple TV being installed in the classroom. I think teachers will be thrilled with the options available to share their desktop with the projector, switch to their iPad so they can walk around the room and still show their notes on the screen, and then let a student put their work up on the screen — all without plugging in a single cable or wasting time trying to find the adapter that was supposed to be returned to the projector cart or their desk drawer.

None of the above-features are going to revolutionize education or create a surge in demand for Macs, but I do think that it will help tremendously in schools where iPads are being adopted. OS X Mountain Lion pulls together iOS and the Mac in a way that will make it easier for teachers and students to go back and forth with iCloud syncing (as long as you work out the policies and procedures to do that effectively), and AirPlay makes it dead simple to make use of projectors and big TV screens as well.

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Hands on with Remarks, a remarkable iPad PDF annotation app

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:59:39 +0000

App developer Readdle has been very busy lately. A big update arrived recently for its PDF Expert software, and now the company is also launching a brand new note-taking and PDF annotation iPad app called Remarks. Here’s a hands on look at what the app offers users.

Remarks, like PDF Expert, offers PDF annotation and filling tools, but it’s a much more streamlined tool than that app, with a focus on making it easy to mark up and share documents, as well as create your own notes and notebooks independent of any pre-existing PDFs that can also be marked up and shared with other Remarks users for collaborative work.

Remarks is that rare beast among PDF tools, either on or off the iPad: it features a simple, straightforward interface and everything work very quickly, with speedy response times for turning pages, adding notes, and basically anything else you’d want to do. Tools, including pens, highlighters, preset shapes and text entry, are clearly labeled with simple icons, and there’s no visual clutter or wealth of unnecessary options to distract you from what you actually need to get done.

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Sharing may be one of Remarks’ best feature. Using email, you can easily share documents with other Remarks users, including annotated PDFs and notes created in the app itself. But in an upcoming update, Readdle is planning to introduce Dropbox, Box.net and other cloud storage sharing options, too, making it even more convenient for doing collaborative work.

Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard or stylus, Remarks is even more useful. It features effective accidental touch or wrist-detection, meaning you can write naturally with a stylus without worrying about drawing in the wrong place, and regular Mac key shortcuts like Command+C, Command+V and Command+A work with keyboard text input.

Remarks allows flexibility in creating notes and notebooks, allowing you to rearrange pages as you add them or after the fact, but it doesn’t overwhelm with options like other iPad notebook offerings. And since it’s also a full-fledged PDF annotation tool, and one that can be used collaboratively, it’s probably one of the most versatile iPad apps for students, and a fairly inexpensive one at $4.99.

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McGraw-Hill is Apple partner, but still has questions about iBooks

Erica Ogg — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:35:40 +0000

Educational publishing giant McGraw-Hill had a major presence in Apple’s new digital textbooks initiative announced Thursday. The company is one of the first to put high school textbooks in the iBooks 2 app and worked with Apple on the iBooks Author app.

I talked with McGraw-Hill Education SVP of Strategic Services Vineet Madan on Friday about the company’s own vision for the future of iBooks and interactive course material in general, as well as how it makes sense for the company to have seemingly competing investments in iBooks competitors like Inkling and CourseSmart. Madan also made it clear the company has concerns about maintaining consistently high-quality textbooks that are published with iBooks Author. Here are some of the most interesting points from our conversation.

McGraw-Hill saw the iPad early on but chose not to partner with Apple on iPad textbooks right away

It turns out the publisher wasn’t too keen on the original version of iBooks, according to Madan.

“We’ve been talking with them since iBooks first came out. We said iBooks was insufficient in its form — prior to yesterday — for delivering education content…. It wasn’t a suitable delivery medium for that content. We talked to Apple about what we thought was necessary and ended up working with them to bring that to fruition.”

Instead, back in 2010, McGraw-Hill took a minority stake in Inkling, which has been making interactive textbooks for the iPad for two years, primarily for the higher education and non-education market. They’re also investors in higher-ed focused CourseSmart, whose chilly response to Apple’s entry in the market I wrote about yesterday.

iBooks 2 is only a “first half-step” to the future of e-textbooks

Using interactive material to get students engaged is great. But McGraw-Hill sees a future where students not only learn using digital books but can also can be tested and have the material tailored for particular needs.

“The next step is can you start tracking information about how students are learning and what they’re learning. You need rigorous tested assessments, something the current version of iBooks doesn’t yet support. But you need strong assessment in there and you need to link the data with how students are navigating content to provide tailored instructional paths.”

They don’t lose money charging $15 for a digital textbook instead of $75 for a physical book

Madan explained the math to me: The high school textbooks they publish sell for between $65 and $85, or an average of $75 each. Each book is used for five years on average, which is $15 per use, per year, or the same as what Apple is setting the price for textbooks in the iBookstore.

But wait; it actually gets better for the big-time publishers: “We are then out of the business of printing books, shipping books, being responsible for warehousing when this scales,” said Madan. That can lead to new investment in more interactive and enriched content.

Even McGraw-Hill execs wonder where school districts will get the money for iPads

In the higher education market in the U.S., mostly everyone has the right hardware and has enough bandwidth. But the story is different in primary and secondary education.

“But in K-12, the big open question that went unanswered yesterday is school districts and their funding environment. They can pay $15 a book, but that’s if they choose to spend $500 to $800 to buy iPads first.”

Madan said he personally was “surprised they didn’t announce some sort of academic pricing or education pricing for iPads to jumpstart this.”

McGraw-Hill is concerned about the quality of content published through iBooks Author

“Opening up the authoring tool to everyone raises questions about the validity and rigor and quality of the instructional tools available [in iBookstore]. … Someone still has to curate and assemble and test. Given the very open nature of the authoring tool, it could end up creating something where there’s a lot of noise. That could run a little counter to the objectives we all have.

But he sounded optimistic about finding a solution. Said Madan, “Collectively, we need to solve that problem. But that’s to come.”

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Hands on with Apple’s iTunes U: An education

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:08:39 +0000

In university, I used a single clipboard/portfolio to store my notes from every class, then mostly piled the day’s work on the floor according to subject matter. Now Apple has launched a new iTunes U dedicated app, which makes keeping track of course material ridiculously easy compared to my days of academic foraging.

Most students and educators who’ve been in school in the past 10 years have probably run across Blackboard, or some similar system for managing courses online in an interactive digital environment. Generally speaking, those systems are lacking in a lot of ways: navigating them can be difficult for new users; the same content can easily be filed in multiple places, leading to confusion; they usually aren’t engaging or attractive in terms of visual design.

Apple’s iTunes U addresses all those problems. It uses a UI that mimics the real world, which some people say is the wrong approach, but should help students and education professionals who grew up using traditional tools transition to digital methods. iTunes U also organizes things organically and according to common-sense logic, which should provide a greater uniformity of experience regardless of who’s putting together the course package. Finally, like all Apple products, it invites touch and interaction. There’s actually something satisfying about tapping off tasks and assignments listed in each course package.

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You can also see all the additional course materials, including notes, slide shows and video, and download them individually. Course materials are also available once you subscribe from the course pack itself.

The courses in iTunes U work on a subscription model, so you’re automatically kept up-to-date as a course proceeds. The course catalog makes it easy to find what you’re looking for, with specific sections for post-secondary education, programs from outside universities and colleges, and K-12-targeted material. Like Apple’s other digital marketplaces, it also provides highlighted courses chosen by Apple’s team, as well top charts and categories.

From the perspective of someone who’s designed a course syllabus and planned a class of study, this definitely seems like a great tool for educators. You can lay out exactly the course of action students need to take, complete with videos, slides and assignments listed as items in a list, where you can access them directly. It not only makes it easier for students to follow an instructor’s thinking, but should also help instructors better plan, organize and imrpove their courses.

If there’s one major downside to the iTunes U app, it’s that it’s most definitely exclusionary; students need an iPad, iPod touch or iPhone to take full advantage. Obviously, that’s Apple’s goal: to attract more users by providing appealing software experiences, and I definitely think it’ll succeed based on what I’ve seen so far.

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Why textbooks of the future are not books

Erica Ogg — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:33:02 +0000

As we predicted, on Thursday, Apple introduced a new toolset for publishers and authors to create and distribute digital textbooks. That wasn’t too much of a surprise. But what’s become more clear after hearing Apple’s pitch, which is aimed at K-12 school teachers, school districts, homeschooling parents, publishers and students themselves, is that the future of textbooks isn’t a book at all.

Apple has updated the iBooks app, now called iBooks 2, and with that comes a whole new category on the iBookstore for textbooks with material from the big publishers like McGraw-Hill and Pearson, as well as other authors who want to sell their textbooks and learning tools there. And the really killer part of this is the easy publishing tool, iBooks Author, which is free and replicates an iWork experience, like building a presentation in Keynote, into a click-and-drag method of building a textbook. It’s not just for compiling material from scratch though; it’s very clearly tailored for already published material to be imported and easily formatted as an iBook.

But what you make with the authoring tool isn’t really a textbook. It’s an interactive learning experience. You have text, of course, but you can drag in image galleries, embed videos, 3D models, presentations and slideshows. You can touch and swipe and watch instead of just reading and taking notes. (If I was in high school today, I might actually find chemistry class as interesting as history with these very tangible, engaging tools.)

When students are interacting with these books, they can also touch to highlight, look up information, search, take notes in the margins and compile instant flashcards for studying. You can do all that with a physical book, but not with a couple of touches and swipes.

Matt MacInnis, CEO of Inkling, which makes similar digital interactive textbooks, but for the higher education market, says this is the reason his company doesn’t call them textbooks. They use the term “smartbooks.”

The traditional textbook “is going to have to go away,” he said in an interview last week. “The future of publishing is learning software and analytics and feedback and rich technology.”

For a generation of students that grew up using the web and social networks and is addicted to a constant stream of information, the interactive part is what makes learning something that grabs students’ attention. The feedback part is also really important. Apple hits that note with its study guides and review sections at the end of iBooks chapters. Along with the standard questions, there comes the instant feedback of answers, so the learning process is immediate.

Joining a crowded field

Apple is certainly not the only company working on interactive textbooks or a digital education platform. Kno is one of the largest providers of textbooks for the iPad. Chegg just introduced a really nice e-book reader for a variety of platforms, and Inkling has been making interactive textbooks (and cookbooks) like this for a while — but has a number of books that’s only in the triple digits. What Apple is offering is a platform that lets anyone make these interactive books. There are already 20,000 textbooks on the iBookstore. Adding tools and important partners is guaranteed to increase that number.

So despite not being first, Apple is a force to be reckoned with in whatever industry it directs its focus on. And in this case, I think what they want, rather than disrupt the whole industry a la music and video content, is to be an assistant. The authoring tool, the distribution platform, can help drag the biggest players of a very old-school industry into the present (and hopefully, future).

And more importantly, what Apple is offering is a way to change the conversation about textbooks and bring that dialogue into the mainstream. We don’t know a lot of things yet: how many school districts can afford hundreds or thousands of iPads or how the textbook publishing industry at large will react. But we do know one thing: textbooks don’t have to be physical, expensive, static or boring.

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Apple to help “reinvent the curriculum” with new iTunes U

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:49:12 +0000

Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue announced a revamp of iTunes U on Thursday, designed to help teachers create full online courses instead of just creating videos or lectures. The new iTunes U will have its own app, which is similar to iBooks.

Courses will appear on a bookshelf, as in iBooks, but teachers can add much more to courses, including a syllabus, office hours, topics of classes, notes and posted assignments. Students can click through assignments to automatically view the requisite chapter in an e-book, if it’s available in the iTunes library.

Videos can be streamed or downloaded directly to the iPad for later viewing, and courses can also contain audio, video, documents like PDFs, and even apps. Students can rate courses in the iTunes U store, just like they would books or software. Combined with custom-authored e-books created in iBooks Author, this looks like the ultimate tool for the truly hands-on professor. And unlike the initial iBooks textbooks, it’s specifically aimed at higher education.

Grades K-12 aren’t left out, however. Cue also revealed iTunes U will now be available for primary and secondary educators and students, as well. The service is available in 123 countries. The iTunes U app is available today in the App Store, for free, and is designed to work on both the iPad and iPhone.

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Apple education event live blog

Erica Ogg — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:56:23 +0000

We’re here at Apple’s education event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The company is expected to launch a set of tools that allow self-publishing of textbooks and possible partnering with textbook makers to push a digital learning initiative. The event and our live blog will begin at 10 a.m. ET.

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Will Apple make iMovie for interactive books?

Erica Ogg — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:40:28 +0000

A page from "Alice for the iPad" by Atomic Antelope

Since before Apple announced its education-oriented press event taking place this week, there’s been some speculation — including here — that a logical step would be to start selling digital textbooks directly through its iBookstore. It would make sense because Apple needs a way to juice iBook sales, it has a fantastic e-textbook reader in the iPad and because, well, what else would you announce at a small “education” event in New York City, the center of publishing?

It turns out, it might not be that complicated.

To begin with, if it were about books, it’s a little odd that many in the publishing business don’t know anything about what Apple’s about to announce. What if what the company reveals on Thursday is more consumer-oriented with an educational edge to it? It could be a publishing platform for building and making interactive kids books, with an emphasis on simple creation tools; something easy to use and geared toward helping people build their own digital storytelling projects. It could be like a publishing version of iMovie, iPhoto or GarageBand, a set of tools that enables anyone to put together and self-publish interactive books? That’s something that parents, teachers or independent content creators could use, and could certainly be considered “education.”

The word “book,” by the way, is hard not to use in this context, but it’s not very accurate. As Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis told me last week when talking about the future of digital textbooks, “textbook” is wrong when what were are really talking about are digital learning tools, instead of paper pages. “That’s going to have to go away,” he said. “The future of publishing is learning software and analytics and feedback and rich technology.”

Interactive books with feedback and rich content on the iPad aren’t only for kids, of course; here’s a list of some with good grown-up oriented content. Plenty of companies have already been using the iPad as a platform to publish interactive kids’ books. A search on the iTunes Store will pop up everything from digital-only publishers like Atomic Antelope that build beautiful children’s stories for the iPad, to TouchyBooks and several interactive book versions of Disney movies. But we have heard Apple’s announcement is geared toward the younger end of the K-12 set, and this could fit with that idea. It also wouldn’t be a huge surprise if people took a new set of tools for building visual stories with rich content and ran with it and it eventually became much more popular outside of content aimed at younger kids and students.

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How does Apple fit into digital education?

Erica Ogg — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:50:31 +0000

Apple sent invitations on Wednesday to an event in New York City next Thursday, in which the company is planning to make “an education announcement.” ”Education,” of course, can mean a lot of things. Many are connecting the event with comments Steve Jobs made to his biographer about a project he was working on toward the end of his life, and expecting that the company is going to announce some sort of digital textbook initiative through its iBookstore platform.

There’s a lot of opportunity in digital textbooks, a space that’s rapidly heating up. Here is a collection of figures rounded up by the New York Times last fall that paint a good picture (emphasis ours):

According to the Student Monitor, a private student market research company based in New Jersey, about 5 percent of all textbooks acquired in the autumn in the United States were digital textbooks. That is more than double the 2.1 percent of the spring semester.

Simba Information, a research company specializing in publishing, estimates that electronic textbooks will generate $267.3 million this year in sales in the United States. That is a rise of 44.3 percent over last year. The American Association of Publishers estimates that the college textbooks industry generated a total of $4.58 billion in sales last year.

So it’s not necessarily a huge mystery why Jobs and Apple would want to be a part of a digital textbook and learning revolution, especially since it has a great tool for reading textbooks in the iPad. There are already 40 million of these sold, with another burst of sales expected this year when the next-generation iPad is revealed. But there are also plenty of companies that already do this. It’s not as if Apple would be filling an entirely gaping void here if it were to launch a textbook store or publishing platform. Here are some of the companies who are already making textbooks available on iOS devices:

Inkling. Inkling is a two-year-old San Francisco startup that debuted the latest version of its iPad textbook app in August (see our video here), which combines not just reading school texts, but cool social and interactive ways to study with others via the app and in-app links to external, authoritative sources. Inkling, notably, has taken investment from leading book publisher McGraw-Hill and education services provider Pearson. Inkling has 110 titles so far, mostly geared at college students, with some texts for high school and non-school titles as well.

Kno. Kno started out as its own e-reader for textbooks, but the company quickly moved to a software-only approach. Now the company has 150,000 textbooks from 45 publishers available. Their textbooks are viewable on Apple devices via the Textbooks by Kno on the iPad. Kno also has extra services beyond just reading, like its feature that generates flashcards for studying saving you the hassle of writing out the cards yourself. Last fall, the company was the top-downloaded educational app in Apple’s App Store.

CourseSmart. The company was founded by a group of higher education textbook publishers to offer digital titles. It currently has 20,000 college textbook titles and has had an iOS app for reading them for over a year.

Vitalsource. Ingram Content Group — the umbrella company for several textbook publishers — also has its own app, with ~~60,000~~ 80,000 digital textbook titles available for download to any iOS device.

The iBookstore hasn’t been the smashing success that its other digital stores have been, like the App Store or iTunes, but textbooks would be a way to drive sales and interest in the platform. That said, what happens to these companies that are using Apple’s platform already for digital texts?

Kno CEO Osman Rashid says the company is secure in its position as one of the top providers of digital textbooks on Apple’s platform. “The robustness of the catalogue is what wins,” he said. Kno is working to differentiate itself by also providing ways for students to personalize their learning, as with the flashcard feature. Matt MacInnis, CEO of Inkling, didn’t seem threatened by what Apple might announce either.

“Apple has always done cool stuff in education, and this will be a continuation of that tradition,” MacInnis said in an interview. He says that based on Jobs being very public about his concern for K-12 textbooks, he added, “I’m sure they’ll do some interesting content-related things for the iPad and for K-12.” But “textbooks,” he says, is the wrong word to describe where this entire industry (and possibly Apple) is going. It’s too old-fashioned for what digital learning tools are going to become. “That’s going to have to go away. The future of publishing is learning software and analytics and feedback and rich technology.”

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