The northern California supplier of electronic textbooks on Tuesday released free software that makes digitised forms of college textbooks available on Apple’s ubiquitous iPhone or iPod Touch devices.<\/p>\n
“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 CourseSmart executive vice president Frank Lyman.<\/p>\n
“We see incredible potential for iPhone and iPod Touch applications in education.”<\/p>\n
Students that buy “eTextbooks” from CourseSmart can view them from any Internet-linked computers and are able to print out pages or copy sections into custom study guides.<\/p>\n
Instead of lugging old-fashioned ink and paper books to classes, students can use iPhones of iPod Touch devices to access textbooks online for reference during classes.<\/p>\n
“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,” Lyman said.<\/p>\n
CourseSmart began offering eTextbooks in 2007 and as of Tuesday had reportedly sold copies to students in slightly more than 5 900 schools.<\/p>\n
CourseSmart said it works with a dozen major textbook publishers to stay current with electronic versions mandated by professors for classes and claims its prices are typically about half that of print versions.<\/p>\n
The CourseSmart iPhone program is available at Apple’s online App Store.<\/p>\n