After some reflection on iBooks...

So, I have been spending some time with iBooks... the app on my iPhone as a method of presenting ideas and the books available on the bookstore and as a method of creating our own content. It seems to me after a few weeks of messing about (Seymour Papert uses Claude Levi-Strauss' term bricolage to describe my recent work) with iBooks I have come to a few conclusions:

1) It is a good choice for presenting PDF files... anything I can get into PDF displays perfectly well using my $30 dongle and the VGA projector in my classroom.

2) The free content available is OK-- not great, not terrible. When I read the science books, I get the sense they were written by graduate students who drew from the textbooks on their shelves. Nothing to run from, but nothing to run to... sufficient to hold my attention and to cause me to want to watch the development closely over the next year.

3) The content I am creating falls into the category I described in point #2. But I do have the sense that things may be different as we explore the medium of the interactive textbook. I am reminded of the advise given to me by a progressive educator when I was learning the craft. He said, "plan your lecture notes to get yourself organized, then throw them all away and think about how to really teach the material." That advise seems to apply equally well to developing iBooks-- write it, then go back and find ways to get the interactive bits into it.