Group items tagged

"As the nonprofit tech company operating Bookshare, the largest library of accessible books in the world, Benetech believes the time is right for the publishing world to seize this era of opportunity. We believe that all content born digital can-and should-be born accessible. We understand how to navigate this new world of opportunity-both by identifying the possibilities and working to resolve the challenges. Tremendous progress has been made when it comes to retro-fitting books, especially those that are primarily text, but as digital content becomes richer and more complex, the challenge of making it born accessible will require broader partnerships and technological innovation. The resources we've provided below are meant to help publishers and the myriad of other new, digital content creators understand the basics of how to make content born accessible. These resources highlight the challenges that images, interactivity, math equations and other complex features pose, but also demonstrate how they can be addressed. Working together, we know that accessibility can become a critical component in the creation of all content"

Instructors have frequently found that some content, such as mathematical formulae, chemistry laboratory experiments, and business practices, are unusually difficult for students to comprehend through text-centered approaches, and that this is especially so for online students. In response, instructor-made videos (IMVs) of three to 10 minutes in length on problematic topics or subject matter areas were produced for business, chemistry, and mathematics courses. The IMVs were intended to scaffold student learning. Initial findings revealed that multimodal IMVs involving the demonstration, illustration, and presentation of key terms, knowledge, skills, and resources can help students understand important procedures, structures, or mechanisms in previously problematic content. Simply stated, IMVs can have a positive impact on student learning.

An interesting (if subtle) way to link a graphic to the position of text within a story. Scroll down to see the route highlight on the map. Also, interesting way to display footnotes next to the relative content.

"The following list offers 15 sources of quality digital content to use in your courses without worrying about the price tag. "

"The Affordable Learning Exchange was created to help instructors take ownership of their courses and content. We are here to help navigate the waters of affordable resources and find creative solutions that promote students savings. This includes re-imagining the textbook, encouraging faculty innovation, and empowering our faculty through grants and training opportunities to adopt, adapt, create and share open educational resources"

Convert HTML & CSS to PDF. Lets you code a lot of the navigation and content in the HTML that translate to PDF. Apparently this is used in the publishing industry for eBooks.

"Serendip-o-matic connects your sources to digital materials located in libraries, museums, and archives around the world. By first examining your research interests, and then identifying related content in locations such as the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Europeana, and Flickr Commons, our serendipity engine helps you discover photographs, documents, maps and other primary sources. Whether you begin with text from an article, a Wikipedia page, or a full Zotero collection, Serendip-o-matic's special algorithm extracts key terms and returns a surprising reflection of your interests. Because the tool is designed mostly for inspiration, search results aren't meant to be exhaustive, but rather suggestive, pointing you to materials you might not have discovered. At the very least, the magical input-output process helps you step back and look at your work from a new perspective. Give it a whirl. Your sources may surprise you."

"Use the power of WordPress to transform online content into an electronic book."

A new competitor to PDFs. Sounds pretty interesting.

short video on remixing and creativity. This is part 3 of a series and highlights the Mac. Be sure to keep watching after the credits for additional content.

"Coffee courses are an easy way to learn new ideas for using technology in your teaching. Each coffee course will cover a new topic in education technology, teaching online, digital tools, pedagogy, or trends in technology. It is equivalent to a one- or two-hour face-to-face training session, but is done at your own pace from your own desk. Courses are offered regularly through the blog, and take place over one week. Each day while the course runs, a short activity or video will be posted to the blog for you to do. It should take about 15 - 20 minutes, just enough time to enjoy a cup of coffee (or tea, or whatever you prefer). For more information, please see this post about coffee courses. You can do any course at any time and all are welcome to participate. If you would like recognition on your employment record for completing the course, you can register for the session on HORUS prior to the course starting (available for ANU staff only)." From Wendy: I love the blog idea! Participants from their University can review each course and post a substantive comment to the blog in order to get the certificate. We could do this with workshop. It would help ensure faculty are really learning, since their posts would be public. Thoughts? Also note that all of their content is posted with a CC-BY license in case there's something we can use. It's also a model we can follow?

Course design spa idea from Aimee

Free from Stanford.  

Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol 1 - in HTML form.

Tips on creating "rich" email signatures. There is a companion article that is linked at the beginning of the article.

A handy guide on "multimedia literacy" from the University of Delaware. Includes information on pre-production, production and post-production.