There is a new Apple app, iBooks Author, to help people create these multimedia books (not only for textbooks). And it's free, but the books will only work with the iBooks store, where Apple gets 30% of sales. It's a pity it's one-store-only, particularly since iBooks only has a minority bite of the market. It's a Mac app and requires the Lion (10.7) OS. (Unfortunately. I still have not replace all my non-Lion-compatible apps.)
And a new iTunes U expands the often-free iTunes-delivered education programs.
TidBITS has an article with an overview of these things.
A more speculative question is what will happen — particularly in certain subjects where collaborative scenarios or access to specialized equipment aren’t important — to higher education n general if it becomes possible to take most courses online in this fashion. Will the intangibles of a college education — maturation, networking, exposure to opportunities — and the eventual diploma be seen as worth the skyrocketing tuition costs?
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