Books created for iBooks 2 can have all manner of media attached, complete with multitouch capabilities. The company listed numerous ways in which iBooks 2 authors can create engaging content for students, including multiple-choice questions with immediate feedback within the text, the ability to make notes and highlights that can be found in a single location as note cards or sprinkled throughout the text, ways to explore embedded graphics and 3D animations, full-motion movies, and more.

iBooks 2 itself is an app for the iPad, but books for the application can be found within the already existing iBookstore under a new "textbook" category, with free samples available to those who want to try out the books first. Students can use codes to redeem them for books and can re-download them whenever they need to.

But how does one create a textbook for iBooks 2? Apple also announced a Mac application on Thursday called "iBooks Author," which Apple Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller described as "powerful and feature-rich." The interface, as demoed to the audience, is similar to Apple's iWork applications and allows authors to format books through WYSIWYG interaction and format the pages in a variety of ways. (It's worth noting that news broke on Wednesday that Apple had commandeered its VP of productivity applications Roger Rosne to head up this project.)

In addition to the WYSIWYG interface, authors can further customize their books with HTML5 or JavaScript, and the application provides live previews so that authors can see what the final result will be before publishing. The price of the books is capped at $14.99 or less (the company specifically said "high school" books, so it's unclear as to whether the cap applies to all books), though instructors can sell individual chapters at what Schiller described as a "very aggressive price."

"If you've ever been involved with creating e-books before, you know this is a total miracle in terms of time savings," Apple told the audience in NYC.

But that's not all! Apple brought out its Senior VP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue to discuss a new iTunes U app for iPad. The app will allow college and university students to download full courses from Apple's iTunes U section on iTunes and view them in an easy-to-use manner. The app lets students navigate through a course overview and outline, and professors can customize their course offerings by adding office hours and credits as well. Instructors can post notes that get sent to students' iPads and even make assignments through the app.

Like the offerings through iBooks 2, the iTunes U app allows for materials beyond the usual, boring college texts. Instructors can add things like audio, various documents (such as Keynote presentations or PDFs), and even other apps for students to use. Cue pointed out that numerous universities are already using iTunes U, such as UCLA, UC Berkeley, and University of Paris. Up to this point, however, K-12 schools have been excluded from iTunes U, but Cue said that was changing on Thursday, with the company allowing K-12 institutions to create iTunes U offerings as well.

All three of the apps discussed in Thursday's announcement—iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and iTunes U—are free to download from their respective app stores. Apple clearly wants to make the effort accessible to everyone, including instructors, though we have no doubt the company plans to charge its usual 30 percent fee for the sales of books and other educational materials through the iBookstore and iTunes U.

source: arstechnica