Ebooks at Liberal Arts Colleges

Very cool idea. Would be interesting for a version of that to be given to a single campus population.

Very good catch, as an exemplar. Note the absence of Apple products. And the way he misses class in that Waldorf story.

"We get the chance to beat the book for CS learning! Our NSF CE21 (Computing Education in the 21st Century) proposal was funded for about $990K from October 1, 2011 to September 30, 2013. The goal of this project is to create new media for learning computer science at a distance by high school teachers. We are pursuing the correspondence school model of distance learning, rather than a remote classroom model, in Sir John Daniel's terms. We want to create a medium that can be studied, within the time constraints of high school teachers (or others, like people re-entering the IT workforce.) A key idea is that we can design instruction, following principles of educational psychology, to help people learn computing better. "

" Books work. Let's make books better. Why build off lectures? Why try to "take over" courses?"

"The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has accused Educause, a higher education IT association, and technology community Internet2 of ignoring the "accessibility barriers" that are preventing blind and print-disabled students from fully participating in a major e-text pilot initiative being coordinated by both."

Ouch. This happened while NFB was already communicating with Educause and I2?

""There is no e-reader that supports what we found these students doing," said first author Alex Thayer, a UW doctoral student in Human Centered Design and Engineering. "It remains to be seen how to design one. Its a great space to get into, theres a lot of opportunity.""

"Welcome to the Digital History Reader, an online learning experience designed to enable students to develop the analytical skills employed by historians. The Reader presents key events in U.S. and European history in the format of self-contained modules. Students learn by exploring the data presented, evaluating conflicting accounts or interpretations, and developing their own conclusions based on the evidence provided."

The following are my notes from the presentation - Born accessible: making e-books fully inclusive from day one - held during the NISO- The E-Book Renaissance Part II: Challenges and Opportunities. Best efforts were made to ensure accuracy.

"Dive in with Duke University's Cachalot app, a novel digital textbook designed for students enrolled in Duke's Marine Megafauna class, but free for everyone, everywhere."

"Dr. Stephen Craig is teaching Honors Chemistry (Chem 43) using team-based learning instead of lectures and online resources instead of a textbook."

"In 2011 the Temple University Teaching, Learning & Technology Roundtable created The Alternate Textbook Project. The goal of the Project is to encourage faculty experimentation and innovation in finding new, better and less costly ways to deliver learning materials to their students. Through the Project faculty can receive a competitive grant to develop an alternate to the traditional textbook. That could be anything from a customized set of instructional content to an existing open textbook. There is no expectation that faculty will author complete open textbooks."

"Dear SUNY Faculty, We would like you to consider being one of the first to produce an Open SUNY Textbook. We invite you to apply by submitting a brief proposal by December 17th to publish your textbook as an open educational resource and print-on-demand title, made possible thanks to a SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant and the support of SUNY Libraries & SUNY Press. If selected, you will receive an award of $3,000 upon the completion of all work and required forms. An additional $1,000 will be paid to you if you decide to include and assess student involvement in the design and development of the textbook.* Although an open textbook is free online, you will be eligible to earn royalties on sales of the print-on-demand edition, if applicable."