Amazon ran a not so successful etextbook experiment at Princeton this year. Now it’s time for the iPad to take a crack at the digital textbook market. Wasting little time, CourseSmart has announced an iPad app that will bring thousands of textbooks to Apple’s new platform. The video above gives you a glimpse into this initiative. And while you can only tell so much from a short video, it looks like this product could have some legs. The interface looks pretty slick, and the product quite usable. The downside is that CourseSmart doesn’t do enough to lower costs for students. Generally, the company rents digital textbooks for 50% of the price that Amazon sells hard copies. That leaves students still paying inflated prices. And so the video above hardly constitutes an endorsement. It’s more to show you where the market is going.
See our young and growing collection of Free Textbooks.
via Wired
Already, you can download a free app produced by Coursesmart
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