This just released by CourseSmart: an iPhone app for reading textbooks in class and on the go. Pearson Education is one of the many (currently 12) large publishers that partners with CourseSmart to make textbooks available for students and instructors to review and use in online formats, and now a free iPhone/iPod Touch application will allow the following features (from www.coursesmart.com):
eTextbooks for the iPhone gives users many unique eTextbook features:
- Enables students to easily browse, search and read thousands of textbooks from their iPhone or iPod Touch.
- Preserves the carefully laid out pages giving students quick and easy access to not only the full text but essential content such as diagrams, illustrations, and charts in the palm of their hands.
- Allows students to “stack” all of their textbooks in “My eTextbooks,” a personal, online library.
- Students can search for a topic within a single book or across their entire eTextbook stack; view text notes; access the table of contents; zoom in on text, graphs, and scroll through or jump to individual pages.
CourseSmart has (or will have soon) an information page up on their website at www.coursesmart.com/go/iphone.
Has anyone had success with CourseSmart availability in the past? Will your students be likely to embrace textbook access on smartphones like the iPhone, Blackberry, or Pre? How have you integrated student smartphones into the class – or is it still possible to request that students shut them off when they enter the room?
