CourseSmart’s eTextbook App for the iPhone
So much excitement about the iPhone! CourseSmart just announced the release of its free eTextbooks application on the App Store. The eTextbooks App allows student and instructor subscribers to access their CourseSmart eTextbooks whenever and wherever they want.
“We’ve seen significant demand from student customers for the ability to get required textbook content in electronic form on an iPhone or iPod touch,” said Frank Lyman, executive vice president of CourseSmart. “It’s important to students to be able to access textbook content in color with the same page layout as a printed textbook and now the eTextbooks App allows them to do that.”
According to the press release, the iPhone App:
Provides any time, anywhere access to the eTextbooks students have purchased online at www.coursesmart.com[link].
–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.
–Allows students to “stack” all of their textbooks in the “My eTextbooks” 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.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
It’s interesting how portable education has become. With an app like this, distance learning seems to be even easier. But, call me old fashioned, there’s something about holding an actual textbook that makes me less inclined to try this app.
- Natalie Raven
@ Natalie–I agree with you on being able to hold and turn the pages of an actual textbook. In addition, I’m not a huge fan of reading books on a screen. However, some people seem to do just dandy reading the screen version of novels and textbooks (and, sadly, even newspapers). So for those who are happy to save money by purchasing eTextbooks, there is now the option of looking up some pertinent bit of information on one’s iPhone. I can’t imagine actually wanting to do all ones reading on an iPhone screen, but from what I read about this particular app, it seems that the main use is to have access to your textbooks whenever necessary. Take care,
Alexa