iBooks 2

Apples iBooks 2 is designed to bring a new textbook experience to the iPad, which the company views as an evolution beyond traditional, paper-bound textbooks.

These interactive textbooks will feature not only multimedia such as video and touchable graphics but also tools such as highlighting and search.

The software platform converts students notes into study cards, and alters the textbooks layout depending on the tablets orientation.

Apples other initiative, iBooks Author, lets authors and publishers create those interactive textbooks.

The iBooks Author interface seems reminiscent of Apples other productivity software; it offers the ability to add everything from text to graphics by drag-and-dropping, with text flowing automatically around each new added element.

Available as a free download in the Mac App Store, Apple intends iBooks Author as a tool for creating textbooks for every subject at every level, for $19.99. Any e-book created via iBooks can be published to a special area of Apples iBookstore hub.

The revamped iTunes U is a free app gives educators the ability to distribute course materials and video or audio lectures, as well as view presentations.

As with iBooks Author, Apple is emphasizing the supposed ease-of-use in constructing a full course, via the iTunes U Course Manager.