Get Smart: Textbooks on the iPad

Well, unless you think reading a textbook is fun. Yep, besides checking your stocks, going online, getting directions, tweeting your friends and playing games, if you're in school you may be using your iPad to read your textbooks. Now you can get in touch with your textbooks as well (please see "Getting in Touch" from February 23rd) as getting in touch with many other things.

Textbook Publishers now on iPad

Inkling, a startup publisher of interactive textbooks, has signed an agreement with McGraw-Hill to make its top 100 undergraduate titles and as well as medical texbooks available on the iPad.

As of December 14.8 million Apple iPads were sold; exactly how many of those are being used in the classroom (for purposes of the classroom where it's being used) is not clear. When Apple introduced the iPad one of the claims made was that it would change the learning experience in the classroom and many universities and school districts across the country began testing them.

Ebook Advantages

The titles wouldn't be any less expensive in iPad form, but they would have the added value of being interactive, sociallly collaborative as some games, and obviously not so heavy to carry around. The load factor is important, expecially with all those medical textbooks that are individually heavy.

Inkling has found that the vast majority of students are purchasing the digital version over the old-fashioned print version. Interestingly, you can actually purchase a chapter at a time from a textbook, and the majority of students going for the digital version are doing just that. Yeah, like you can go into the bookstore and buy a chapter at at time.

If you have an iPad, or are imagining owning one and if you had the opportunity to go back to school, or if you are currently enrolled, I'm very curious as what version of a textbook you would rather have and what your reason would be. Please let me hear from you.