It is already rumored that January 19th Apple media event will be all about Textbooks and iTunes U. And today Wall Street Journal reported that McGraw-Hill will likely partner-up with Apple for this announcement. Shara Tibken wrote on WSJ:

McGraw-Hill has been working with Apple on its announcement since June, a person familiar with the matter said. It wasn't known whether Pearson and Houghton Mifflin also would participate.

Cengage Learning, one of the world's largest higher-education textbook publishers, has partnered with Apple in the past and will be attending the event. The company declined to say what its role is in Apple's announcement this week.

"Apple today clearly has a strong position in hardware, and companies like Cengage Learning have a very strong position on the content side," said Bill Rieders, Cengage executive vice president of global strategy and business development. "To the extent there's a combination there, that could be exciting."

In other January 19th Apple event related news, Ars Technica is reporting that Apple will announce tools and platform for digital textbook publishing. Ars Technica’s Chris Foresman posted:

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.

At the same time, however, 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.

Overall it looks like Thursday’s Apple media event will be all about textbooks and e-books publishing. It will be interesting to see what kind of innovations Apple brings to the education world.