Clint Lalonde

Post a brief introduction to let us all know:

• Who you are?
• Why you are interested in open textbooks?
• Have you ever had a favorite textbook? What made it your favorite?

So, I'l start. I'm Clint Lalonde, Manage of Open Education at BCcampus working on the BC Open Textbook Project. You can find out more about me on my blog.

I do have a favorite textbook, although it wasn't used in school. It was part of a collection from 1976 called Childcraft. Each book had a specific theme, and I can remember there being these transparent overlay's of the human body that each contained a different system of the body. When you added the transaprent overlay, you could build up this model of a human body. And I thought that was pretty well the coolest thing.

You can read a bit more about why these were my favorite "textbooks" here.

There is no specific discussion topic for this forum, but this forum is set up for those of you who have questions or wish to experiment with modifying an open textbook.

If you have taken up this week's optional activity of installing an eReader and reading an ePub document using the eReader software, use this topic to post your experiences with the eReader software that you used. Consider your post a review that others could use if they wanted to replicate your experince. Was the software easy/hard to install? Did you find the interface intuititive? Was it difficult loading an ePub file onto the device? What features of the software do you think would make it appealing to students?

After reviewing the content and criteria in the Evaluating Open Textbooks section, use this topic to post your thoughts on what you think are the most important qualities of a textbook? Why? Thinking about textbooks you have used in the past, what do you like/don't like about them? Post your thoughts in this discussion topic.

During the course of this week, please explore the different repositories and referatories listed in the Finding Open Textbooks section and try searching for open textbooks. As you search for open textbooks, post your thoughts about the different repositories and referatories in the discussion forum. Were you able to find what you needed? Was the material peer reviewed? Did the review help you evaluate the material? Were there other devices in place to help you evalute the content? What were your impressions about the different referatories and repositories?