Apple is launched the annual Japanese version of its back-to-school promotion, intended to encourage Mac sales. Unlike the US and Canada, many schools in Japan start classes on April 1st. This year the company is giving away a 10,000 yen ($129) gift card, which can be used toward content at the iTunes Store, the App Store, and/or the Mac App Store.
Apple is now selling a special scaled-back 13-inch MacBook Air to schools, a report says. The model is said to have the same internal specifications as the standard 11-inch Air, including a 1.6GHz Core i5 processor, 2GB of RAM, 64GB of flash storage, and Intel graphics. The new option is limited to schools buying in bulk, though, at a price of $999 per system, or $4,995 for a group of five. A regular 13-inch Air would normally cost $1,299.
O'Reilly has released a new programming book for iOS developers with more than 100 lessons. iOS 5 Programming Cookbook is geared towards users that are comfortable with the iOS SDK and includes lessons that show different approaches to designing an interface, how to develop location-aware apps, access the accelerometer, and more. Currently, the digital copy is being offered at the discounted price of $20, while print and print/digital options are set at $50 and $55 respectively.
Apple has now informed resellers that the educational version of the white MacBook, the last such model, is now discontinued, MacRumors reports. The $999 notebook was marked "end of life" for consumers last July, but the company continued to offer the model to educational institutions. The move marks the end of any non-aluminum Macs, and reflects the growing tendency of schools to focus on significantly-cheaper iPads as digital learning portals.
Quest Visual has updated its augmented reality translation tool, Word Lens, with the ability to translate between French and English. The software uses the device's built-in camera to identify text, and is capable of performing real-time translations without an internet connection. The app itself is available as a free download in the App Store, however, individual language packs are sold as $10 in-app purchases.
The Obama administration is urging both schools and companies to make a transition to digital textbooks within five years, says the Associated Press. The message was delivered by Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski on Wednesday. Switching to digital is said to be a way of not only providing interactive learning, but potentially saving money and updating the content of textbooks faster.
On February 14 FileMaker will be hosting a web seminar designed to teach participants how to use their current database in a mobile setting. The session will focus on both user interaction and system architecture, and will show how screen design, lightweight schema and hybrid development techniques can be used to improve productivity. Two one hour sessions have been scheduled, the first will take place at 11am EDT and the second at 2pm EDT. Registration is open for both and can be completed online.
Nintendo is partnering with Japanese service provider NTT DoCoMo to bring speech recognition tools to the classroom. Together, the two companies are using Nintendo's DS handhelds to display a teacher's words directly on the handheld gaming device's screen as they are spoken. The intent is to help students with disabilities learn better.
School districts in Madison, Wisconsin will be getting a total of 1,400 iPads this year, all of them paid for by Microsoft, reports the Wisconsin State Journal. The state will use a portion of the nearly $80 million it will receive from the tech giant to buy 600 iPads this spring and 800 more in the fall. The money comes from a decade-old settlement of a lawsuit Wisconsin and 18 other states filed, alleging Microsoft routinely overcharged for software.
New social media functions, new apps and new features for its iOS apps mark navigation software and hardware maker Garmin's presence at MacWorld/iWorld, currently going on in San Francisco. Among the other features, updates will let users "check in" using social services via their navigation apps, integrate their exercise with Garmin tools, go on a digital treasure hunt, plan private-plane flights and send out map links to a live tracking map to others.
At the Florida Educational Technology Conference on Wednesday, Google Chromebook for business and education head Rajen Sheth announced three school districts have signed on to receive 27,000 of the browser-powered notebooks. The devices will be used by students in Iowa, Illinois and South Carolina. In addition, hundreds of schools in 41 states have at least one classroom with a Chromebook, Sheth added.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates talks briefly about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in a new Nightline interview on ABC, reports note. Gates comments, for instance, that it was strange for someone as "vibrant" as Jobs to die so relatively young. "It makes you feel like, 'Wow, we're getting old.' Yet you look back and think about the great opportunities we had," he says.
HP showed the changing roles of netbooks on Monday with the introduction of its first new netbook for 2012, theMini 1104. The 10-inch netbook is focused on schools and business and primarily adds Intel's faster Cedar Trail-era 1.6GHz Atom N2600 for faster graphics and overall performance. It comes with Computrace Pro and a TPM security chip to help track the netbook if it's stolen.
Apple has opened up a new iTunes U support section on its website. The content is mostly aimed at educators, for instance guiding people through publishing, the Course Manager, and the Public Site Manager. Both students and faculty have access to forums, and instructions for dealing with settings and common problems.
Apple may have seen as many as 350,000 iBooks textbooks downloaded since launch. Global Equities Research claims to have a special tracking method that showed the relatively brisk take-up. As many as 90,000 copies of iBooks Author had been downloaded at the same time.
Backing up some of the arguments made by Apple during its presentation yesterday on the advantages of e-textbooks, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) announced encouraging results from its pilot test of a digital Algebra I textbook running on iPads versus traditional textbooks. Following encouraging early results, the spring 2011 California Standards Test showed roughly a 20 percent improvement with students using the app over those using textbooks.
Prior to yesterday's textbook announcement, McGraw-Hill had been in talks with Apple since at least June, an AllThingsD interview reveals. "Sitting and listening to all of this, I wish Steve Jobs was here," says McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw. "I was with him in June this past year, and we were talking about some of the benchmarks, and some of the things that we were trying to do together. He should be here. He probably is. This was his vision, this was his idea, and it all had to do with the iPad."
Music software company MakeMusic kicked off its NAMM industry trade show presence with a pair of announcements: in February, the company will make an as-yet-untitled iPad viewer app available for its Finale sheet-music users that will let them view print and play electronic sheet music. It also announced an improved 2012 version of its ">Finale NotePad.
Apple as part of many education introductions Thursday put out iTunes U as a self-contained app (App Store). The title turns what was once ultimately a glorified podcast section and turns it into a system that can be used for full, active courses. We're taking a look at an app to see how well it works in practice.
(Updated with event stream) Apple has released the promotional video played at today's press event in New York City. The clip primarily pushes Apple's new textbook format, and the use of iPads in education. It also complains about the state of modern education, though, suggesting that Apple technology will help spark kids' interest in learning.
Apple committed iOS to education in a big way at its event by launching iBooks 2. We've taken a look at Apple's first dip into a full digital textbook platform and come back fairly impressed. Read ahead for more details and what this might mean for Amazon, Kno, and others hoping to get into e-books for schools.
Following its announcements of iBooks 2 and the iTunes U app, Apple has released iTunes 10.5.3. The update is a relatively minor one, explicitly intended to support the new interactive textbooks made possible by iBooks 2. It may also provide a backend for iTunes U, since the latter app supports buying and downloading online course material.
Complementing its introduction of iBooks 2, Apple has also announced a separate iTunes U app. While superficially resembling iBooks, the title is capable of presenting complete online courses, including syllabi, reading material, media, and interactive content. Teachers can update courses with bulletins, such as new assignments, which trigger notifications for students. When an assignment is done, a student can mark it as complete.
(Updated with iBooks Author availability) Presenting at today's education event in New York City, Apple has introduced iBooks 2, a major update of the company's reading app. A strong emphasis of the app is on textbooks, which can include things like movies, animations, and interactive elements, such as the ability to zoom into cell structures in a biology book. Books now also support elements like indexes, glossaries, review questions, and turning highlights or glossary items into study cards. Titles can be read in a new fullscreen mode, and a Textbooks section has been added to the iBookstore.
Apple is starting its New York City education event. The company is expected to introduce a new system to ease publishing textbooks and is rumored to be updating Pages and iBooks, including a possible Mac-native iBooks app. Check our real-time coverage for updates as they appear, starting from 10AM Eastern.
Apple could announce Pages '12, an iBooks 2.0, and textbooks rentals at this morning's education event in New York City, claims ZDNet's Jason O'Grady in a Twitter post. The writer cites only a "little birdie" for the information but also mentions that iBooks 2.0 could include a version for Lion, and that all three products will be announced by Roger Rosner, Apple's VP in charge of iWork.
Wolfram Research, well known in education and academic circles for its Wolfram Mathematica product and Wolfram|Alpha statistical search engine, has launched a dedicated portal for educators and students called the Wolfram Education Portal that is planned to offer online web courses, teaching materials, interactive textbooks, videos, demonstration slideshows, community features and more. The company is teaming up with the CK-12 Foundation to produce free content.
On the eve of its education-oriented PR event in New York City tomorrow and less than a week before its fiscal first-quarter earnings call with analysts, Apple stock closed at an all-time high of $429.11 at the end of trading on NASDAQ today. The stock's price had gone as high as $429.47 during the day but fell slightly before the closing bell, still a gain of just over one percent. Analysts believe the company will report a record holiday quarter.
Apple's digital textbook project is internally codenamed "Bliss," an AppleInsider source claims. The site says it actually received the tip earlier in the week, but it wasn't until a Wall Street Journal report corroborated some of the details that it decided to publish the information. This includes the assertion that Roger Rosner, Apple's VP for iWork, is overseeing the project.
Apple's education event in New York City -- scheduled for tomorrow -- will place an emphasis on growing the educational materials available for the iPad, particularly for K-12 students, say two Bloomberg sources claimed to have "knowledge of the announcement." The people also say that Apple's plans will be revealed by senior Internet software VP Eddy Cue, and involve a set of tools making it easier to publish textbooks and other educational content.
Apple's digital textbook creation system is relying on the manager of its iWork suite, slips uncovered on Tuesday. Productivity app VP Roger Rosner was said by the Wall Street Journal to be "closely involved" in crafting the system. His involvement would reflect the creative nature of the unveiling, which would let publishers and schools themselves easily create their own textbooks.
Apple's upcoming education event is being "over-hyped," a new Forbes report suggests. The business publication cites for instance an anonymous former Apple executive, who claims that the event "is being blown out of proportion." More critically Forbes says it has interviewed Matt MacInnis, the Inkling CEO used as a source for an Ars Technica piece suggesting Apple is working on a "GarageBand for e-books."
Apple's New York City education event is nothing less than a rethinking of how publishers create e-books as a whole, leaks divulged Monday. One scoop characterized the process to Ars Technica as a "GarageBand for e-books" that would let authors and publishers easily build e-books for iPads and iPhones, including interactive books. iBooks would also start supporting ePub 3, which supports audio and video natively and would make the store much more standards-compatible than Apple's custom take on ePub 2.
Kno has sent early word of two major updates for its iPad textbook app (App Store, not yet updated). Kno Flashcards rely on a unique auto-generation technique that looks for key terms and generates flash cards that are grouped together to quickly create a study guide around a chapter or other segment. The development is based on research into episodic memory patterns, the effect of repetition, and metacognition, all of which should lead to genuine learning and not just memorization, Kno claims.
Griffin Technology continued its rollout of 2012 products at CES today, including updates to its Woogie 2 plush toy iOS cases that incorporate iPhones and the iPod Touch as an integral part of the "creature," the expansion into Android apps to control the HELO TC toy helicopters, and a plethora of car- and travel-related accessories including windshield and window mounts for smartphones, a e-reader mount for airline or rail "tray tables," and a combo battery-pack and charger.
Intel has released its next generation of Learning Series platform for the educational market. The Learning Series is a collection of hardware, software, content, infrastructure, and training programs for which Intel provides the Product Reference Designs and development requirements to local vendors to use to produce PCs and related collateral. Lenovo, one of Intel's partners in the program, has said at the same time that it will soon begin shipping its latest iterations of these devices, the Classmate+ Clamshell and Classmate+ Convertible laptops.
Apple has confirmed rumors of a New York City event on Wednesday. The company has asked the media to join them for an "education announcement in the Big Apple" on January 19 Its event will take place at the Guggenheim Museum and puts the Apple logo in a traced-out New York City skyline.
Following the introduction of Lilipad's kiosk display cases, two more companies have joined the fray of making commercial-quality stands and cases for the iPad and iPad 2 to be used as touchscreen kiosks. Kiosk Group are offering a collection that focus on complying with the latest Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements, while Griffin has come out with its own line that offer different amounts of access to the front-panel controls.
Marvell brought its XO 3.0 tablet—the brainchild of One Laptop Per Child—to Las Vegas ahead of CES, where Electronista took the opportunity to finally handle the education-focused device. Although the tablet shares many hardware features with Android-based offerings, the physical build and OLPC's own Linux-based Sugar OS offer a much different experience.
Several more details have emerged about Apple's January event. 9to5Mac, for instance, says it has heard that iTunes staff are in "lockdown mode" ahead of any announcements. MacRumors meanwhile says it has learned of Apple taping promotional interviews with textbook publishing executives, although the site adds that it's uncertain if they relate to January plans.
Apple's rumored January event will be concentrating on iTunes U, and education in general, according to sources in touch with blogger and Fox News anchor Clayton Morris. Morris says he first heard about the event in September; at the time it was scheduled for late fall in New York, but ultimately postponed. New York remains the site for the spiel because of its central location for textbooks and publishing, Morris states.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced that its tiny PCs are finally nearing full production. The group is showing off the Raspberry Pi populated PCBs that are currently being used as the first run of beta devices, as project team members continue to test the hardware and software ahead of a public launch.
Three completely different new iPad apps help show off the platform's full range of capabilities with interactive educational content, serious business use and creative imagery. The magazine Science offers an app that features content aimed at the ongoing impact of our planet's human population and the issues that arise from that growth; ByteSquared takes your business mobile with Office2 HD, and Evernote debuts Skitch for the iPad.
Amazon has announced a major update of the Kindle iOS app, 2.9. The most important changes apply exclusively to the iPad, which now has access to the same magazines and newspapers available on the Kindle Fire. This includes over 400 publications, such as Men's Health and Popular Science. People can either subscribe to content or buy issues individually.
Lenovo has reportedly delayed its launch plans for the ThinkPad X130e, the upgraded flagship X-series mini notebook that was first introduced several weeks ago. The supply hiccup appears to be limited to individual purchases, suggesting the device, which is geared for schools, may have been met with strong demand from educational institutions.
Yamaha has posted a clip showing Siri controlling a Disklavier piano over Wi-Fi. The demonstration uses an implementation of Apple's Airplay technology that sends an audio signal through an Airport Express to the analog MIDI inputs of the Disklavier. User's can ask Siri to play songs from their iTunes library, and the piano will reproduce any audio file that contains MIDI data.
The Rockefeller University Press has released new iPhone and iPad apps for its three journals: The Journal of Cell Biology, The Journal of Experimental Medicine, and The Journal of General Physiology. The three apps allow users to read and cache full-text articles, as well as view high-resolution images and access podcasts and other feeds. Support is also included for bookmarking articles, searching through content, sharing items through Facebook and Twitter, and more.
Lenovo early Tuesday upgraded its most inexpensive ThinkPad X-series with a mind to help students and the public at large. The 11.6-inch X130e has a stronger bezel, hinge system and even 33 percent stronger edges, all meant to let them survive casual bumps. Performance is now much better as well, with the option of a 1.65GHz AMD E-450 chip versus the earlier E-350 as well as a new Intel Core i3 2367U.
The deputy CTO of New York City's public school system, Tom Kambouras, has warned school principals that the widespread use of mobile devices, from iPod Touches to Android smartphones, by school employees has overrun the IT department's capabilities to the point that as of November 10th, no new devices were being allowed to register on the system-wide Wi-Fi network. The NYC Department of Education's system is run using Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync.
In celebration of Cyber Monday, O'Reilly is extending its Deal of the Day to include 60 new and top selling ebooks and videos. Discounted books included The Art of Readable Code, Javascript Web Applications, HTML5 Cookbook and more. The discount cannot be combined with any other offers, and can be obtained by using the code "CYBERMONDAY" at checkout. All O'Reilly ebooks are DRM-free and purchases provide customers with lifetime access, multiple file formats and free updates.
