Apple brings educational content to India with iBooks Textbooks

iBooks Textbooks will now be available in India. On Tuesday, Apple announced that it was expanding into 51 countries including new ones like India, Brazil, Italy and Japan. It has also made iTunes U Course Manager available in 70 countries including Russia, Thailand and Malaysia. “The incredible content and tools available for iPad provide teachers with new ways to customise learning unlike ever before,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services  in a release. “We can’t wait to see how teachers in even more countries will create their new lesson plans with interactive textbooks, apps and rich digital content.” iBooks Textbooks are very popular among students in the US and UK as it covers almost the entire US high school core curriculum and UK’s General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) syllabus. It provides students gorgeous, fullscreen textbooks with interactive animations, rotating 3D diagrams, flick-through photo galleries and tap-to-play videos. They can be updated as events unfold and don’t need to be returned. It now has nearly 25,000 titles from publishers like Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Hodder Education. Meanwhile, the iTunes U Course Manager lets educators quickly and easily share their knowledge and resources directly with their class or to a global audience on iTunes U. This free iOS app gives millions of learners access to the world’s largest online catalogue of free educational content from top schools, leading universities and prominent institutions, the release added.