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Another innovation milestone: The Open University launches iBooks textbooks for iPad

Peter Scott, Friday 26 October 2012 | Annotate
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The Open University has launched a collection of new iBooks textbooks for iPad, available through the iBookstore. As Apple releases the new category of educational product outside the US, The Open University adds iBooks textbooks to its range of innovative media. iBooks textbooks give the OU the opportunity to bring strong learning interactions into the electronic book format, with serious questions and a high level of student interaction ‘in text’.

Peter Scott, Director of KMi, said, "Because The Open University designs pedagogy to fit the student’s needs of any channel, the innovative iBooks textbooks for iPad offer an exciting new channel. The OU aims to be there, ahead of the pack."

These new format text resources, created with iBooks Author are also now embedded with the OU's highly successful free courses in iTunes U. With over 58 Million international downloads of its materials since the channel launch, and 2 Million iTunes U course subscriptions, the iBooks textbooks compliments its free iTunes U courses.
The iTunes U ‘course’ narratives provide an extra pedagogical context for these texts, with additional resources (not always the OU's), extra tests, and ideas of how the texts could be used in different ways in different learning contexts.
For example, the OU's popular iTunes U ‘Volcanoes’ course now refers to the new iBooks textbook ‘Changing face of the Earth’. This uses the graphical plotting of complex data and considering what the plot data means right inside the book itself, with video and questioning resources to help learners.

The Open University is already ‘open at scale’ in electronic books with over 450 free “ePub” book resources available via The Open University on iTunes U. The release of new format iBooks textbook resources can now enrich that mix, and allow the OU to further innovate with a rich feature set and innovative learning interactivity.

The Open University's Changing face of the Earth textbook is now available on the iBookstore on iPad or at www.itunes.com/iBookstore.

Editors Notes:
The Open University’s iBooks textbooks are available on the iBookstore on iPad or at www.itunes.com/ibookstore.
Apple, iBooks and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store and iBookstore are service marks of Apple Inc.

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