Games and Learning

iTunes U launched its new room for education late Wednesday.

This week saw Apple make a series of moves to improve its educational offerings both in the U.S. and abroad.

The most recent came late Wednesday when Apple published its “For the Classroom” feature on iTunes U.

“This cross-content room on iTunes U assembles education resources across apps, books, and iTunes U collections for poplar subjects including algebra, biology, chemistry, literature, history, and more,” Andy Bowman, a spokesperson for Apple, said in an email, adding the new store would be an ongoing feature and the company planned to add new topics in the coming months.

[“For the Classroom”] provides helpful learning tools organized by subject for students and is a destination for teachers looking for digital content to build lessons and engaging classroom activities for iPad.

Andy Bowman, Apple Spokesman

The new iTunes U feature comes only days after Apple announced it would be expanding its iTunes U Course Manager program to 70 countries and its iBooks Textbooks to 51 countries. The expansion focused on Europe, Asia and parts of South America.

In announcing the moves, Apple officials said their efforts were aimed at improving the tools available to teachers in other countries.

“The incredible content and tools available for iPad provide teachers with new ways to customize learning unlike ever before,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said in a release. “We can’t wait to see how teachers in even more countries will create their new lesson plans with interactive textbooks, apps and rich digital content.”

Those who watch the tech giant said the apparent new effort to beef up its educational tools comes in response to the changing market.

“As Apple faces increasing competition from the likes of Amazon (via Whispercast) and Samsung (which has placed Chromebooks into a number of U.S. districts), expanding its educational reach like this makes sense,” Alex Colon wrote on Gigaom.

Early last year, Apple confirmed that it had sold more than 8 million iPads to schools across the globe, but in recent months some of the more ambitious programs in the U.S. have dealt with questions about the tablet’s cost.

Los Angeles Unified School District faced intense scrutiny and some delays in implementing its huge program to give thousands of  students iPads. Additionally, Google for Education and its Chromebook made quiet headway in the educational market.

As much as the clash of tablet and software giants is playing out in the U.S., reports of similar jockeying in the educational systems in major overseas market like India are already starting.

Still, the move to expand access to the iTunes U teacher and book tools overseas and improved curation of tools here in the U.S. could help get more iPads into the hands of students.