At an event at New York City's Guggenheim Museum today, Apple announced its intention to dive into the education market: The company plans to enhance the textbook experience on the iPad tablet computer, making e-textbooks cheaper, interactive, accessible, and easily navigable, adding elements like video, rotatable 3D imagery, and more.

iBooks 2, which launches today, is an update to the iBooks app that's tailored to present the new interactive textbooks. It's available to iPad owners as a free app. And the iBooks store is adding a new Textbooks section that will features high-school textbooks initially; the books will cost $14.99 or less.

Also launching today is iBooks Author, a free app designed to let everyone easily create interactive e-books.

Publishers Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin were announced as partners in Apple's textbook initiative.

Apple rolls out digital textbook service iBooks 2 [Reuters]
Apple for the teachers [Technologizer]