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Showing posts with label ebooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ebooks. Show all posts

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Tools for Educators to Collect Their Own Resources

blog.empowerlms.com
Textbooks are resources that have been collected by publishers to fulfill curricular needs. Printed textbooks are provided in a "one size fits all" format. The two largest states, California and Texas, usually identify what they want in their textbooks and then the rest of the country uses these texts. Some of the publishers are providing the opportunity of states, school districts and educators to customize their textbooks. Publishers provide a collection of information and then the educational organizations create their texts from the material offered. The problem is that they are still printed texts and they are stuck with them until they print the next edition.

Readings, Watchings, Listenings and Doings
As a professor of at the University of Northern Iowa, I don't use textbooks. I have a great deal of resources that my students must master, but they are collected in a textbook. I make my resources available through the Web. Millennials or Generation Y students are not readers of books. They read a great deal but it is from screens for the most part. This group of learners (ages 11 - 28) work best with multimedia. This means that they want to read, but they also want to learn information and build knowledge through video, audio and activity. They want to learn through interactive learning opportunities even as they encounter new information.  

Readings: This is where we refer the students to online articles and readings in books (printed and digital). Just because we don't use textbooks, it doesn't mean that we don't use books. There is a plethora of information contained in the tombs of knowledge.
Watchings: Our students are visual learners. Pew Internet estimates that Millennials spend as much as 8 hours on the screen per day (watching TV, viewing YouTube, interacting with Facebook, etc.) This is the medium that is best for their learning. I find many videos on YouTube, Edutopia, and other subject-specific sites. Sometimes I create my own videos to address specific needs.
Listenings: Our students are multi-taskers. Many of them are audio learners. I have found a wealth of resources in podcasts. The beauty of using podcasts is that they can listen to them on their iPods/phones while they are walking or working out. Learning while jogging may seem blasphemous, but we are learning all the time. Why not include coursework in the informal learning that we do.
Doings: Learning by doing is the key to meaningful learning. This is where you ask your students to complete surveys, research information, collaborate in problem solving, or ????  Your actual assignments will probably be described on a different online page, but these are usually the activities that lead to the final assignments.

Here are some examples of my RWLDs:
iBook Author
While using a blog is a simple way to organize resources for class, Apple has released the iBooks Author.  This is a much more sophisticated but simple way to create your multimedia RWLDs or Digital textbook.  The best thing is that as we create these books for our courses we can share them with other educators.

Apple has not only created a tool that enables us to create our own digital textbooks, they have also developed/uncovered a market in digital books. They are using their iTunes store to distribute their interactive books for $15 each.

How does this fit our quest into using digital books in your class?  What do you see as how you can make your resources more interactive and instructional for your students?
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Thursday, May 10, 2012

Joe's Non-Netbook

We are constantly talking about how our "digital native" students are trying to learn in our 19th century classrooms.  Our Millennials are connected 24/7 except when they come to class are expected to unplug.

Here is a video that I found where Joe is having problems making a book work because it doesn't have the elements of the ebooks he is used to reading.

What do you think?  Is this a problem in your room?

iPaper
I added this to the posting on May 21.  Just thought that this spoof fit well and didn't have to create a new posting.


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Friday, January 02, 2009

Publishing Your Own eBooks

eBooks provide a venue for distributing your ideas with little or no expense in publishing your ideas. I write a great deal on my blogs and in my teaching. eBooks provide a way to professionally collect and publish your work. It also makes it easy to distribute to your friends and public.

I was just reading about Social Media on Brian Solis's blog, PR 2.0, when he mentioned his eBook, The Essential Guide to Social Media. This is an eBook that he created as a "quick start" overview about participating in the social media world. He collected the most commonly asked questions and answers and turned them into a downloadable ebook. It has a number of good ideas that I will cover later, but the format was what really enchanted me.
The eBook was printed through a website entitled Scribd. A potential author can upload a file/book/set of document to the website where it turns the work into what they call iPaper.11 different formats (e.g. Word, .pdf, Powerpoint, Excel, Open Office, etc.) Moreover, Scribd is building a huge library of resources that can be searched and accessed. iPaper is a rich document format that was built to be displayed through the Web. Originally created with Adobe Flash, it can be viewed through a variety of operating systems. You can upload your document in wide range of formats. 
Imagine how this can be used in your classroom. The opportunities are endless in presenting content and publishing student work. Here are a few that I have found:
  • Publishing student anthologies.
  • Creating a collaborative publication that is shared and enjoyed between classes.
  • Providing course content to students in book-like format
  • Creating brochures
I must admit that I am new to iPaper and Scribd. iPaper appears to me to be an online version of .pdf. One of the advantages that I see is that it allows you to embed articles into blogs (see below) or onto webpages or ???
I just wrote an article for my other blog, Keyboarding Research and Resources, where I discuss the research into the effects of covering a computer keys when learning to keyboard. Just for fun, I uploaded this paper onto Scribd and below I have provided some ways to access it including embedding the file into this posting. Have fun.
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Here's a link to the online Scribd page of this article, Can Learning to Touch Type be Facilitated by Covering the Keys on a Computer?

Here is the embedded version. I embedded this document by copying the HTML code from the Scribd website and then pasting it into the HTML version of this blog posting. Look at all of the various formats available for viewing this document. Click on the iPaper dropdown menu to see that you can view it in a book, document or presentation format. You can email it to a friend or print it or whatever.

What do you think of this the iPaper/Scribd options?
Have any of you used this tool?
What are your opinions?
How would you use it?