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This was an interesting session about using Apple Configurator to maintain a pool of iPads for circulation to autistic students. The good side is customization can be done and quickly, the downside is a one-to-one ratio for apps licenses and iPads, a steep learning curve to the Configurator software, and being limited to what apps Apple provides.

For those of you that enjoy TED videos...

So awesome. I'm not sure I'll pay $3 for many of these, but it's cool just the same. I'm actually kinda surprised they are directly monetizing their old content.

Not really breaking new ground but an interest piece about the St. Louis County Library after county residents improved a tax increase for the system and some details about Vartan Gregorian, the current president of the Carnegie Corporation and the past president of the New York Public Library.

Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland, now offers for free the influential Book of Kells, to be viewed online. There's even an iPad app for this!

A fairly complete review on the new Kindle Fire HD, notable that most of the improvement was done with faster and better hardware and not in the interface. Notable is the upcoming 8.9 inch Kindle is the device with cellular connectivity, the Fire HD still uses wireless ethernet. Also notable is the primary competitor is not Apple's iPad but Google's Nexus 7 which in shape and general performance is similar but uses Google's Play store.

Okay, this is pretty darn cool. Thanks, NASA!

We're at the dawn of the tablet era now. Earlier this month, Apple sold 3 million of its new iPad during the opening weekend, with some analysts expecting over 60 million of the tablets to be sold worldwide. What's more, e-book readers are selling even more briskly than tablets.

I heard today that after the Govmn't sued Apple and 5 ebook publishers for colluding to keep pricing favorable, 3 of the 5 publishers have already settled out of court. I wonder if Apple thinks they have a strong enough case...

E-Textbooks | News Georgia College Produces Student-Written E-Textbook Nine graduate students in an Advanced Technology for Teachers course at Georgia College have published their own e-textbook, Using Technology in Education, through Apple's iBookstore. The free, downloadable textbook is available on the iPad via iBooks.

An interesting web vendor that is offering interactive textbooks, which is in some ways the repackaging of the original "multimedia" CD-ROM's of the early 1990's, but now offered as a "book." They claim to be partnered with McGraw-Hill and Pearson, and it looks like a user needs to have a perpetual account to use their material although offline access is allowed. Some features such as streaming video and music are separate from the book so they are not true stand alone files, and purchasing a book as an app is currently only for a handful of titles. The list price of several of the books is very steep, and my main concern is how well the multimedia is integrated with the text and if there is any ability to share or transfer a license, which I can't find listed in their website FAQ.