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Apple’s iBooks Textbooks & iTunes U Course Manager hit new markets in Asia, Latin America, Europe

iTunes U, Text Books

Update: Apple says iBooks Textbooks are available in all countries with a paid iBooks store and that a full updated list of countries with access to iTunes U Course Manager can be found on its enrollment website.

Apple just put out a press release announcing that it’s expanding availability of its educational content– iBooks Textbooks and the iTunes U Course Manager– into new international markets. Starting today, both of the services are rolling out to new countries in Asia, Latin America, and Europe, bringing the total number of countries with textbooks up to 51 and the total number with access to the iTunes U Course Manager to 70. Apple also shared some stats on the growth of iBooks Textbooks, which now cover 100 percent of the US high school core curriculum:

“The incredible content and tools available for iPad provide teachers with new ways to customize learning unlike ever before,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “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.”

A few of the larger markets to get iBooks Textbooks today include Brazil, Italy, and Japan, while Apple highlighted Russia, Thailand, and Malaysia among the new countries getting access to the iTunes U Course Manager.

Apple first introduced textbooks in its iBooks ebook app back in January 2012 after it teamed up with a number of publishers to release interactive textbooks using a new version of its iBooks Author tool. In its press release today, Apple said iBooks is currently home to around 25,000 educational titles and noted that the textbooks “now cover 100 percent of US high school core curriculum and the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) core curriculum in the UK.” 

The iTunes U Course Manager allows teachers to create courses for students that are distributed through Apple’s free iTunes U apps.

Apple Expands Worldwide Access to Educational Content

iBooks Textbooks & iTunes U Course Manager Now Available in Over 50 Countries

CUPERTINO, California—January 21, 2014—Apple® today announced iBooks® Textbooks and iTunes U® Course Manager are expanding into new markets across Asia, Latin America, Europe and elsewhere around the world. iBooks Textbooks bring Multi-Touch™ textbooks with dynamic, current and interactive content to teachers and students in 51 countries now including Brazil, Italy and Japan; and iTunes U Course Manager, available in 70 countries now including Russia, Thailand and Malaysia, allows educators to create and distribute courses for their own classrooms, or share them publicly, on the iTunes U app.
“The incredible content and tools available for iPad provide teachers with new ways to customize learning unlike ever before,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “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 offer iPad® users gorgeous, fullscreen textbooks with interactive animations, rotating 3D diagrams, flick-through photo galleries and tap-to-play videos. iBooks Textbooks don’t weigh down a backpack, can be updated as events unfold and don’t need to be returned. With nearly 25,000 educational titles created by independent publishers, teachers and leading education services companies, including new educational content from Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Hodder Education, iBooks Textbooks now cover 100 percent of US high school core curriculum and the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) core curriculum in the UK.
“Oxford University Press is using iBooks Author for Headway, Oxford’s all-time best-selling English language series, to create engaging iBooks Textbooks for iPad,” said Peter Marshall, Managing Director, ELT Division at Oxford University Press. “In releasing 13 new iBooks Textbooks, including ‘Headway Pre-Intermediate,’ the best-selling level in the series, we are enriching the language learning experience for students around the world.”“We believe resources like iBooks Textbooks represent a monumental shift in learning because they engage multiple capacities of each individual student,” said Miguel Dominguez, Marketing Director of Imaxina Novas Tecnoloxias in Spain, an independent educational content developer and publisher of iBooks Textbooks, including “The Senses,” which incorporates interactive elements such as video and animated images of the human eye and ear to illustrate how the body works.With iTunes U Course Manager educators can 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 catalog of free educational content from top schools, leading universities and prominent institutions. iTunes U Course manager also gives teachers the ability to integrate their own documents as part of course curriculum, as well as content from the Internet, hundreds of thousands of books on the iBooks Store, over 750,000 materials from existing iTunes U collections, or any of the more than one million iOS apps available on the revolutionary App Store℠.“iPad is so much more than just a textbook or just a notepad for students—it’s a powerful educational tool, a study partner, a window into the past and a glimpse of the future,” said Sophie Post, fourth grade history teacher at UK’s Falkner House school. “Teaching history was once a static timeline of events. In leveraging the entire educational ecosystem of iPad, creating my own iBooks Textbooks and iTunes U courses, and pulling in apps like History: Maps of the World, studying history has suddenly become a creative, dynamic and truly transformative experience for my pupils.”Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

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Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.