Apple has announced iBooks 2 for iPad, featuring iBooks textbooks, aimed at the education sector.

 

Apple’s iBooks textbooks offer iPad users fullscreen textbooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, unrivaled navigation and much more.

 

In the United States, education services companies including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson will deliver educational titles on the iBookstore with most priced at US$14.99 or less, and with the new iBooks Author, a free authoring tool available today, anyone with a Mac can create iBooks textbooks.

 

Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Philip Schiller said education 1.5 million iPads already in use in education institutions, including over 1000 one-to-one deployments, iPad was rapidly being adopted by schools across the US and around the world.

 

The iBooks 2 app is available as a free download from the App Store, with support for, fullscreen books, interactive 3D objects, diagrams, videos and photos, the iBooks 2 app will let students learn about the solar system or the physics of a skyscraper with amazing new interactive textbooks that come to life with just a tap or swipe of the finger.

 

iBooks Author is also available as a free download from the Mac App Store and lets anyone with a Mac create iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books and more, and publish them to Apple’s iBookstore.

 

Authors and publishers of any size can start creating with Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts.

 

Apple’s media representatives in Australia have confirmed with Government News that the apps are available for local users.

 

Available on the Australian iBooks 2 store are a number of multi-touch books from DK publishing including; My First ABC; Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life; DK Natural History: Mammals Carnivores; and DK Natural History: Insects.

 

Also available for free to download is the multi-touch book Life on Earth from The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation.