It’s been a few weeks since Apple announced the iPad, and it will be several more weeks before this new device is made available to the public. (My initial take on the iPad in education is available in our archives, in case you missed it.) In the meantime, software developers and publishers have been preparing iPad-specific versions of apps, magazines, and books to arrive in time for the iPad’s release and surrounding hubbub. The current cream of the crop, in my mind, is the iPad-enhanced edition of Wired magazine, demonstrated below.
Although Wired isn’t in the education field, I think they’ve done some interesting things in this demonstration that educators should think about. As usual, I ask you to look beyond the surface and think about how these concepts could be applied to learning and teaching.
1. Interactive components
The Wired demonstration features a few interactive ads. Readers can rotate objects (around the 1:30 mark) or zoom and pan photos (around 2:55). Although these are ads, think about how these concepts apply to visual aids in textbooks. Learners could interact with high resolution maps or inline physics experiments from within the textbook. Although the technology to do this sort of thing on a computer has been around for a good 15 years, it can now be provided through a much richer context.
2. Drill-down navigation
This could and should have implications on how electronic textbooks are designed. If you’re familiar with the SMARTER teacher planning process–essentially, identifying and teaching critical concepts–perhaps you can envision how a reader could drill down from a critical concept into the details, on an as-needed basis. The very structure of books as we know them could change!
3. Visual navigation
Accompanying this drill-down navigation system is a new way to jump from article to article. In addition to a table of contents and index, books styled after the Wired demo could be navigated visually. This will place greater importance on the visuals themselves, as they will also be of use for finding content. In fact, this functionality could augment tables of contents or even reinvent the back-of-the-book index as we know it. Any ideas how that might look?
4. It’s not ePub
The Wired iPad edition isn’t viewed through Apple’s iBooks e-reader software. It’s a standalone application, created using Adobe’s AIR cross-platform technology. While the decision to use AIR versus other programming technologies is subject to much debate, what it does do is open up the possibility to add functionality into a publication that iBooks currently doesn’t provide. I’m thinking, for example, that a textbook publisher could embed text highlighting or embedded note taking into an iPad edition.
5. “We want to build a way for our readers to be able to engage with our content on any screen or any device that they want to.”
This quote, around the 3:20 mark, is important. In essence, Wired wants to make sure their content is available via as many different outlets as possible–online, on a mobile device, even paper. I think in educational technology there’s not enough of this; if you want the content (be it text or multimedia) you have to accept the publisher’s format. This format may or may not be the best for you–it may require you to buy extra software, or even a new computer or device, to make it work. The music industry and movie industry have, by and large, come to accept this–vinyl LPs come with a link to download tracks for use on an iPod, and many movies on DVD now also include a version to play on computers and mobile devices. Some publishers of technical books, including O’Reilly and Associates and Pragmatic Programmers, allow you to download purchased e-books in the format of your choice as well. I hope book publishers en masse follow this example.
Our iPad is coming! What do you want us to explore? | Stratepedia Blog | March 16th, 2010
[...] textbook? I’m really eager to see initial offerings of iPad-formatted magazines (particularly Wired’s take on the iPad magazine). I’m still interested in the whole drill-down (or drill-up) of content this new format may [...]