Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

by Richard Schwier -
Number of replies: 13

Okay, let's get down to it after Scott's great session yesterday.  What are your plans for creating an e-book or e-pub?  Let's get some ideas together for some great contributions to our own literature.  I don't care what it is about, but why not jump in and try something/  I'm betting almost every one of us has a good idea for a publication that has been rattling around for awhile, and waiting for an excuse to be created.

This isn't a contract:  you know that you can walk away from anything you say.  But what are your ideas for a publication, and what would it look like?  Especially, what would the affordances of e-publishing add to what you do?

In reply to Richard Schwier

Re: Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

by Kirk Kezema -
I received a tweet about a TED online course through iTues U titled "Creative Problem Solving". When I open iTunes it provided a free subscription to the course. It opened as a book into my iTunes U library. It appears to include text, pictures, and videos. I am very interested in creating an online course in this format.
In reply to Kirk Kezema

Re: Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

by Richard Schwier -

Yes, this is part of Apple's new strategy.  In an earlier post, you'll see that Scott Leslie raises some concerns about the proprietary and exclusive nature of some of the features, and the fact that you have to meet all of Apple's standards in order to offer your product on iTunes.  But it is still an interesting approach, isn't it.  Makes it easy for consumers who have already drunk the Apple Kool-aid.

In reply to Richard Schwier

Re: Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

by Don Beadle -

H'llo all

after viewing the recorded seminar, perhaps using the booksprints approach may help overcome inertia, .... although we are not in the same room 

as sylvie pointed out, we are writing about e pub by discussing e pub

In reply to Don Beadle

Re: Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

by Richard Schwier -

Cool idea, Don.  We may just have to try it out.

 

In reply to Don Beadle

Re: Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

by Scott Leslie -

Well isn't this timely - just about to finish off the latest in my "Open Textbook Authoring" series of posts with one on Booksprints and ways to support them, both f2f and virtually. I will leave the details to that post, but a few comments:

- if you haven't read it, the Booksprint methodology page (and the site as a whole) is a great intro to the concept and practice.

- I think the idea has real merit, especially because a good chunk of content for the proposed book will already have been created in these forums and discussions and so a lot of what remains will be collaborative rearranging, massaging, filling in the gaps, and the approach is not only good for that, it also respects the fact that we're dealing with lots of busy mid-career working people, and this would help it not drag out

- one group that has pioneered an approach that, while not identical to booksprints, is close and shows how well this can work virtually, is the P2PU organizing group. Their technique (from what I've heard - I have not participated in these) is a combination of synchronous voice chat (any of elluminate, skype or google hangout could work) side-by-side with an etherpad document for real-time collaborative note taking and editing. As luck would have it, we run an etherpad installation at http://abbott.bccampus.ca:9001/

So don't want to steer this at all, but if people were interested in trying this out, I could be game for that, even if it were just a couple of hours to hammer out a table of contents and agree on what else needed to be done and who'd do what.

Cheers, Scott

In reply to Scott Leslie

Re: Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

by Richard Schwier -

Steer it!  Please steer it!  This is a great idea, Scott, and I wonder if we can pull it off as a wrap up activity for this seminar?  You game?

 

In reply to Richard Schwier

Re: Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

by Sylvia Currie -

One idea that struck me during this seminar was that it would be useful to have an e-pub about facilitating SCoPE seminars. There are so many excellent examples from Richard to include from the past 10 days! This could maybe part of a bigger e-pub on 'facilitating in the open', a topic I think needs some attention about now.

The first focus is on writing this e-book about e-books. I feel like I'm on a roll!

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

by Richard Schwier -

Oooohhhhhh, I think we all need this!  I think you're onto something really good here, Sylvia, and it would have application well beyond SCoPE.

 

In reply to Richard Schwier

Re: Your plans for an e-book or e-pub?

by Sylvia Currie -

Hilda and I have been fiddling wtih Pressbooks, and right about now are thinking it's not the best platform for a large collaborative writing project that we want to complete quickly! Short version of the story:

  • admin overhead -- need to send out invitations to join, etc
  • compartmentalized - essentially each section is a blog post, so takes some thought to how you want to organize it before you begin (who works that way!)

But LOVE the etherpad / booksprint idea!

I just fired up an etherpad page:

http://abbott.bccampus.ca:9001/p/ebook

Let's schedule it! How about tomorrow (Friday, February 10), say 10:00 am PST? (Just throwing out a time to see if anyone says no, we need to pick a different time)

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Book Sprint today

by Sylvia Currie -

Hearing no suggestions for a different time for our Book Sprint let's go for it today!

When: 10:00a.m. PST (your time zone)

Where: Blackboard Connect

and Etherpad: http://abbott.bccampus.ca:9001/p/ebook 

Resource: Book Spring Methodology

See you there!

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Book Sprint today: Blackboard Collaborate link

by Sylvia Currie -

In my pre-coffee attempt to get the link out this morning it got a little jumbled. I corrected it in the original message. Here it is again:

https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?password=M.187122BE1330F682CFBDD4C3A712C3&sid=727

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Book Sprint today: Blackboard Collaborate link

by Alice Macpherson -

too little, too late for this one.

just finding out about it and imagining what I missed.

:)

In reply to Alice Macpherson

Re: Book Sprint today: Blackboard Collaborate link

by Richard Schwier -

It's never too late, Alice.  We sorted out a few plans that Sylvia will post later, but consider this an invitation to join us in pulling together an e-publication of some sort that gathers the ideas from this seminar, and then extends the ideas.  We're thinking of a big, everyone-in-the-pool kind of collaboration.