On TechCrunch, MG Siegler looks at the new education programs launched by Apple and what they really mean for high schoolers. In Siegler’s opinion, not much. While they might give college students incentive to get iPads, he finds it doubtful that most high school students will be able to get their own, in keeping with Apple’s stated goal that students should be able to buy e-textbooks and keep them forever. The program will be great for college students, Siegler points out. The idea of textbook prices capped at $15 makes the sting of not being able to “sell them...

Ars Technica has a roundup of expectations for tomorrow’s special Apple event. Sources are suggesting a number of interesting possibilities, such as Apple producing a “GarageBand for e-books”—an inexpensive app that simplifies e-book creation and publication as GarageBand has for music. But Apple may have more up its sleeve than just an e-book creation application. It may be planning announcements having to do with digital textbooks, especially considering that the iPad has a great big screen and multimedia capabilities that the company hasn’t really tapped yet for textbook applications. [Inkling CEO Matt] MacInnis...

E-textbook provider Kno has not let getting out of the tablet business slow it down. (Indeed, given the lackluster performance of any tablet not made by Apple or Amazon lately, it was probably the wisest move it could have made.) CNet has a report from CES on some new features Kno has been adding to its e-textbooks. The features include metrics built into the textbooks that will track things like the time students spend reading, notes they’ve taken, and study habits. It will let them compare their own study habits to those of others, and let professors see how...

I’m sure everyone who went to college has had the experience of having to buy a whole book when their professor only turned out to need a few chapters from it. One of the obvious benefits of digital media is that it is more easily segmented than a printed and bound book; in theory, students ought to be able to buy just the parts they need. That’s the idea behind e-textbook site Bookstep.com. This startup allows students to buy just the portions of books and materials their professors need for their classes. Founder Mike Basaraba tells Publishing Perspectives: ...

Steve Jobs has been dead for a few weeks, and so it’s time for everyone to start prognosticating what Jobs really wanted, what he really thought about things, and what he had in mind for the future. Easy to do that when the man isn’t around to speak for himself. Much of this comes from Jobs’s authorized biography, which has been released to newsmedia in advance of its actual publication. Most of it isn’t really on topic for discussion here, but the New York Times mentions that Jobs was planning to hire textbook writers to create digital versions of...

Wired’s Gadget Lab blog reports on the state of digital textbooks, and despite the optimism of some e-textbook manufacturers it isn’t really good. E-textbooks aren’t making much of a dent in the textbook market because most of the time buying and reselling used textbooks is still a better deal. Even though the current generation of students are more dependent on digital technology and mobile devices than ever, most aren’t buying e-textbooks because they are pricier and more heavily restricted than paper books—locked down so students have only limited use of them, and sometimes even expiring after six months....

Here’s some more intriguing e-textbook news from Kno, who recently released a survey showing that the majority of college students would give up sex to avoid carrying heavy textbooks, and who also released an HTML5-based app that allows students to read textbooks through Facebook and the web, Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch has an interesting piece looking at some new interactive features in Kno’s e-textbook iPad app. One such feature is a form of 3D modeling that can convert chemical notations showing how atoms bond together into 3D models that can be enlarged and rotated so students can get...

Smartphones can be used for plenty of things other than information retrieval. Case in point: Amazon has released a new iPhone app aimed at college students. A fine-tuned version of its previous iPhone shopping app, Amazon Student will not only allow students to shop for textbooks and other products Amazon carries, but also let them resell items they already have though Amazon’s Trade-In program. Students can use the iPhone’s camera to take pictures of the bar code of the items for a quick listing. Then they can print a shipping label, and Amazon will send them a gift card...

The Kansas City Star is carrying a story by Nicholas Carr warning that e-books may not be as conducive to learning as printed books. Carr points to a pair of studies suggesting that e-books can lead to students paying less attention to the material they read, or being unable to adapt their print reading styles to make efficient use of digital texts. E-books are much more rigid [than print books]. Refreshing text on a screen is a far different, and far less flexible, process than flipping through pages. By necessity, a screen-based, software-powered reading device imposes...

This fall, four school districts in New York will distribute 3G/Wi-Fi Kindles to students in high school English classes as part of an experiment to see whether the ereader is a viable classroom tool. The program, called the 8-Ounce Backpack Project, was funded by a foundation grant and will pay for teacher training and 84 Kindle devices, which will be loaded with reference materials as well as novels. Read the full article at the Syracuse Post-Standard. Via Seattle PI (Photo: John Berry / Syracuse Post-Standard) ...

SFGate took a look at all the ways today's student can purchase access to a textbook—buying the latest print edition, buying used or older editions, and buying or renting digital editions—and found that thanks to high pricing and inflexible rental periods, going digital is only occasionally a good solution: Each textbook will have a unique set of prices for its different versions, so it makes sense to consider e-textbook rental on a case-by-case basis. However, for the time being it appears that e-textbook rental will only save students money when having a new edition of a textbook is important, and when...

Inkling, which develops digital textbooks for the iPad, has been around for a couple of years now, but this year its been steadily building up steam (or at least cash) as it prepares to dramatically expand its offerings this fall. Earlier this year it secured funding from Pearson and McGraw-Hill, and today it announced a second round of funding from several investors. Inkling's approach is to augment textbooks with interactive, social, and annotation features, then sell them by the chapter for $3 each. The approach may or may not be cheaper--CEO Matt MacInnis says it can end up costing a...