New Wave of Interactive Textbooks for Apple’s iPad

Pearson is today publishing a new suite of multimedia textbooks and reference titles for Apple’s iPad. The full-color books, designed for pre-schoolers, school students and learners of all ages, are available today through a new education channel on the iBookstore. They feature Pearson’s learning content brought to life with video, audio, assessment, interactive images and 3D animations.

Pearson is publishing its first suite of new books to coincide with the launch of Apple’s iBooks textbooks. They feature new, specially-created content from two parts of Pearson: education services and technology company Pearson North America and the illustrated reference publisher DK.

The new titles include some of Pearson’s high school textbooks re-imagined for the iPad. Miller & Levine Biology, Algebra 1 and Environmental Science: Your World, Your Turn are available today, with Chemistry, Geometry and Algebra 2 following soon. An estimated four million American high school students have studied math and science through the print versions of these programs.

Reflecting the potential of Apple’s iBookstore to reach consumer learners, Pearson is also releasing four titles from DK that will appeal to students aged three to 103: My first ABC; Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life; DK Natural History: Mammals-Carnivores; and DK Natural History: Insects. These new DK books are based on titles that have sold approximately one million copies in more than 20 languages.

In total, the first wave of Pearson books contains approximately 7,000 pages of learning content, 1,000 interactive widgets (including 3D animations and Keynote presentations), more than 100 videos and some 5,000 test questions so that students can check their understanding.

GenevieveShore, Pearson’s CIO and director of digital strategy, said: “These books break new ground in digital and mobile publishing. If you open one of these books, you will discover how a three-year-old learns his first words, how his heart beats, how you solve equations and how dinosaurs lived. We’re delighted with the results and we hope that readers, students, teachers and parents are too. We see enormous potential to create these kinds of programs for more subjects, more stages of learning and more geographic markets.”