Here at iThinkEd HQ (deep in the bowels of an undisclosed academic library, hidden in the unanimity of the bound periodicals section), we’re pretty excited about the new iPhone OS Apple premiered the other day. Boasting over a thousand new APIs, we think this is going to be big–especially for a device that’s already captured more than 33% of worldwide smartphone traffic (and almost 50% of US traffic). Here are a few features we think are going to rock higher ed and here’s why:

Incremental Purchase: Okay. This may seem irrelevant at first, but we think that allowing people to buy additional content from within an app is going to unlock text production for the iPhone and iPod touch in a big way. Apple already offers media content in a remarkably convenient format, and we think this will make printed material just as convenient. While people may quibble with the iPhone as an eBook reader, many people are already consuming their eBooks on the device, and making it easy to add new content is going to drive that even further.

Cut/Copy/Paste/Find: People have been clamoring for these features since before the iPhone or iPod touch even went on the market, so it’s not surprising that we’re pleased to see these features finally appear in 3.0. For educational use, this means these devices can finally move from being a platform primarily for consumption of information to a platform for production and collaboration. Now I can have my students go out, find a few URLs and send them to a class blog, or I can have them edit and organize information more readily on these devices. While there were work-arounds before, building in these basic features is going to give me a new way to leverage these devices for learning.

Peer-to-peer: The new built-in BlueTooth auto-detection feature means not only that iPhones can now recognize one another and make ad-hoc networks, but also that I can now use those networks for teaching and learning. Want a quick way to form workgroups or teams? Have students go stand near each other. Voila. What could be easier? And with the new file sharing capabilities, students in those groups could now share documents for collaboration and interactions. If the iPhone and iPod touch were compelling before, this feature makes them even moreso, and we can’t wait to see what developers will end up doing with this one…