In a relatively modest event, Apple held a press conference at the Guggenheim in New York City with the next generation of educational applications. With that, people came away with three exciting new announcements:

• iBooks 2 - Multimedia textbooks are now available in iBooks, complete with photos, videos, and interactive diagrams. Users can search terms within the textbook, highlight them, and make notes on any page they like. Each of the textbooks are available at a price point of $14.99 or less, far less than their physical counterpart. However, each of these textbooks are only available in the United States at the moment, and take up between 855MB and 2.77GB. Hopefully with the inevitable iPad 3, we’ll have a bit more storage space to put these books in.
• iBooks Author – Now people can create these very cool books for the iPad on their Mac OS systems for free. Authors can embed animations, videos, pictures, 3D objects, and even embed custom HTML in their books. It also allows you to import chapters from Microsoft Word or Pages. One important note, please carefully read the EULA for this application before you submit any completed work to Apple. While I can’t confirm anything, but I heard some rumors of it’s far-reaching implications for the authors submitting material. I’ll add more on this when there is something to say.
• iTunes U – Not to be confused with Wii U. A service that was primarily used to deliver lectures is now getting it’s own application. Any educator, whether it be a University professor or an elementary school teacher, can distribute courses online to be consumed by anyone, and for free. This particular app is definitely exciting for anyone looking to further their learning experiences. Introduction to Robots from Stanford University, Multicore Programming Primer from MIT, School of Architecture from Notre Dame, and much more. I’m seriously considering looking up some stuff on Photoshop CS5.