Creating a Textbook Using I - Books

my names tom i went to school here graduated from the film department currently working in the physics department this is some new technology i'm really excited about it i hope i don't bore you to death two years ago about two and a half years ago al gore published a book a follow up to his book an inconvenient truth its called our choice he published it as a nook book he also worked with a company called push pub press and they have a ted talk from about a year ago announcing some new technology that they worked with al gore to create a new kind of interactive experience a digital book version of our choice published this was released as an app downloadable on phones ipod ipad sold for $4.99 ive got it on my phone but i cant output from the phone to the projector so im using my ipad it's the same experience on either device they work for about two and a half years too perfect technologies to make this book into theres not a word for it it's not really an ebook i call it a book app this is the book the book app presents as text in this format chapter by chapter can you highlight anything like you can with pdf not in this app creates an interactive experience for what was presented in his book version video audio this is the geothermal chapter here is the graphic that displays information you can switch back and forth interact with the map and look at what this is displaying is how far down deep a company would have to drill to get to the required 350 degrees F to make geothermal worthwhile i think there's 15 chapters audio probably outputs to the projector i think the audio is on again this app book is sold for $4.99 released about a year ago uh... in february apple had a presentation talking about a new authoring tool that used that book as the template for a new distribution model of interactive textbooks presentation is downloadable as a apple keynote you can go to itunes on the desktop itunes on the ipad or iphone and watch the presentation for about an hour they describe a distribution model that they would like to move towards that is interactive textbooks for schools the model is capping the book costs costs uh... at $15 the terms on the books but most exciting uh... unlike most ebooks or electronic versions of textbooks the books are yours forever once you buy it its yours the $15 i can show you there are some books right now available anywhere from free to fifteen dollars this is a biology textbook by EO known as the person who knows more about ants than anybody on earth harvard professor we can skip this we can get straight to the book this is not an app it is sold as a book as a textbook purchasable through the I bookstore you can take notes since its your you can buy the books you can take whatever notes you want you don't have to worry about them going away because you own the book forever most interesting not just the book but at the conference apple also announced the authoring tool for people to be able to author their own interactive textbooks software called ibooks author this became interesting to me for an idea that i've had for a while uh... about a class and a book that would go with it called the science of film when i sat down with it pencil and paper about a week ago i realized its a huge project i would need a year off in order to complete it i might need to scale the idea down a little bit within it what somebody could do is available as a free program there is no charge for it downloadable in the app store on a mac you can put in video audio mixed media text in the textbooks itself at the end of the chapter there are questions and answer for students to take it do work with the app itself so are there templates within the app of different kinds of textbooks of different kinds of publications you'd want to create there are templates you can work off as well you can create your own the program itself basically laid out like any of the apple programs like keynote pages numbers that was very similar can you see writing in there or do you see writing someplace else and dumping it in there is it more formatting or authoring tool it is an authoring tool and you can do the authoring within the app you can work within a word document and drag that document in or a pages document you can put in a keynote presentation to could a slideshow itself for someone to slide through and look at a gallery of photos the book apps the interactive textbooks behave much like an app in that they update you would get an update like you would get for an app so a concern about a book going out of date is irrelevant anymore because the book itself would be updated as the author would choose to update it html formatting can be input so that it can pull information off the internet and self-update seems to me like this is comparable to the music industry when artists when indie bypassed the big recording studios it pretty much puts the technology in the hands of anybody and that's why i got excited about it because i realized when i saw the presentation there's no reason anybody couldn't do that on their own this is just for macs? software is mac only the interactive textbooks will be ipad only not iphone or ipod touch unfortunately the al gore book our choice does work on all those platforms user intended for the ipad resources if anyones interested on apples website demonstration videos of how to use the authoring program itself keynote presentations is available for download on itunes the book started off in a slow trickle more more slowly many free some two or three dollars capped at 15 targeted toward public schools little bit of an issue on how to get ipads into everyones hands i think its great for higher education in that thats less of an issue if a school want to move towards being an e-campus or even an ipad campus personally for me im retaking some calculus this semester not using the texas instrument calculator im using a $2.99 app if everybody's books were available on the ipad reduces some burden on students total cost of ownership as an author do you have a problem spending a lot of time writing something that will only be avialable in one piece of hardware all your eggs in one basket its a big basket i dont think it would be a waste of time with the amount of ipads like apps i think it was apps we were talking about or maybe it was kindle books no expectations for writing anything small and having a huge market to sell three four five dollar book apples cut is thirty percent you need to create an account with them in order to sell it through the apple book store but those are hoops that anyone could jump through you expect to retire when your 40 with all the money you make off your book i'm one year past that