iBooks Author for Education

I’m very excited about iBooks Author! The Apple Store says of this product – Create and publish amazing multi-touch books for iPad. And right away, my brain starts clicking away 🙂 in many directions – hmm, an interactive self-instructional module (SIM) for our Learning Unit 4 students in the UP College of Medicine. What about our patient education materials in the Diabetes Clinic? The endocrine lay forum slides of the Philippine Society of Endocrinology & Metabolism? Where do I start? I’m getting itchy fingers …

I’m downloading the free app as I write this post! It has page templates to get one started. There is a drag and drop interface for Pages documents – nice. Multi-touch widgets look interesting – have to learn how to use those. And aha, you can submit your book to iBookstore for purchase or free download, that’s neat! The book can also be shared on iTunes U.

Interesting stuff going on as well with the all-new iTunes U! With the iTunes U app on the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, one can not only get access to course materials in one place but push notification is also possible when the teacher posts a new message or creates an assignment. I’ve used Moodle for the past few years in our endocrinology course and students find the interface somewhat too staid. It would be interesting to see how we can add some magic with these new offerings from Apple. I notice that quite a number of my students have at least one of these portable Apple devices.

I know I’m gushing but this is NOT a paid advertisement from Apple 🙂 Let you know once I get cracking with iBooks Author!