“Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19,” Chris Foresman reports for Ars Technica.

“While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the ‘GarageBand for e-books,’ so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users,” Foresman reports.

Foresman reports, “Authoring standards-compliant e-books (despite some promises to the contrary) is not as simple as running a Word document of a manuscript through a filter. The current state of software tools continues to frustrate authors and publishers alike, with several authors telling Ars that they wish Apple or some other vendor would make a simple app that makes the process as easy as creating a song in GarageBand. Our sources say Apple will announce such a tool on Thursday.”

Read more in the full article here.