McGraw Hill, Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt K-12, and Kaplan are among the publishers that have teamed up with ScrollMotion to develop digital versions of their books that are more than text-to-screen conversions.
ScrollMotion is working on enhancing text books by adding in video, the ability to highlight text and record lectures, note taking support, searching, and support for interactive quizzes — features that could make iPad-based text books more appealing to schools.
How well ScrollMotion’s text book enhancements pay off for it and publishers, however, remains to be seen. Apple introduced the iPad at the end of January as a multimedia tablet and ebook reader, but won’t ship the product until some time in March.
Apple’s iPad hasn’t hit store shelves yet, but ScrollMotion is already familiar with developing products for the iPhone OS — the platform that powers the tablet device. The company’s Iceberg ebook reader has been available for the iPhone and iPod touch for some time, and ScrollMotion is working on releasing version 3.0 some time this summer.
The iPad’s relatively low entry price of US$499 will likely help sales, but some schools and Universities may have already committed to purchasing other devices such as netbooks or competing ebook readers, potentially leaving Apple’s new product out of the educational market for several months.
Despite the iPad’s potential lag moving into the educational market, companies like ScrollMotion stand to find new success thanks to Apple’s new tablet because interactive books have the potential to be big business even outside of the classroom.