Do we really need our schools to start issuing text books on a proprietary platform? No, we don't need that. We don't want that. It makes no sense at all.
You want non-paper books? Great. You want multimedia integrated into your textbooks? Fantastic. You want to tie your school to iOS and force your students to purchase an iPad in order to take advantage of the new features and benefits in your textbooks? No way.
Instead, what we need is an open, potentially even web based system. My friend +Philip Berne suggested that just a short while ago on Twitter. It makes sense. HTML5 can do a lot of great things, including multimedia. It also has the benefit of working on many devices. I can see issues with managing subscriptions and purchases, though, since anything on the web is up for grabs. Even without web-based solutions, there are other formats, like EPUB and PDF/A, that could be used safely on many different platforms.
If a child has access to but a single device on most any computing platform (PC, Mac, tablet, smartphone, etc) then he or she would have access to the books needed. With all the fancy additional features not found on paper.
And it would still work on an iPad.
The last thing we want to do latch onto a single hardware platform for our school books, especially when that platform is far from the most affordable. Android powered tablets and simple netbook computers can be had for far less than an Apple iPad.
Access is what's important. Not riding the wave of Apple's amazing success with the iPad.