Who says gadgets makes people lazy and antisocial, and that our youngsters today should not be using them too often? Gadgets, especially tablets, is a great platform for students to learn from and it looks like things have just gotten better for us Malaysian users. Apple recently announced that they have expanded their education tools – iBooks Textbooks and iTunes Course Manager – to more markets in Asia, Latin America, Europe and beyond, and Malaysian users can now use iTunes U Course Manager.
In case you are not familiar with what iTunes U Course Manager is, it is basically a tool that allows instructors or educators to create course programs that will be distributed for use with the iTunes U app on iOS. This means that instead of sticking to the same old syllabus with outdated material, educators can personalize their own syllabus, handouts, assignments and other items, and share them with students or publish it to the institution’s iTunes U site. Instructors can even include content from the iBook store and the App Store, as well as links from the internet, or link to materials from over 500,000 selections available on iTunes U, including audio and video content from world’s leading education institutions.
If you are interested in creating your own course, you may start immediately at the iTunes U Course Manager using your AppleID. Sadly, iBooks Textbooks isn’t available here yet but since the Cupertino company is expanding its offerings, let’s hope it won’t be too long for them to launch that in Malaysia. iBooks Textbooks allows publishers to create interactive, digital-native text for students that can be accessed via iBooks app on Mac and iOS devices.
(Source: TechCrunch, Apple)
