integrated content environment - Tool bar for word and open office that supports direct publishing to web and print - supports templates - can be used in conjunction with DSpace for example.
Nowadays, the digital version of print magazines and newspapers are becoming increasingly popular among publishers as they can save printing and postage costs as well as they are able to reach a whole new audience in the online world. The continuing interest of digital in the adaptation of digital replica editions of newspapers and magazines encourages web developers to create websites that are offering service to allow anyone to create their own digital magazine and newspaper. Some of these websites are very easy to use, simple and provide you with unlimited access to their resources for free.
"Booktype is a free, open source platform that produces beautiful, engaging books formatted for print, Amazon, iBooks and almost any ereader within minutes. Create books on your own or with others via an easy-to-use web interface. Build a community around your content with social tools and use the reach of mobile, tablet and ebook technology to engage new audiences."
"Learning Space as Creation Space
The next generation of learning spaces will take all the characteristics of an active learning environment-flexibility, collaboration, team-based, project-based-and add the capability of creating and making. Project teams will be both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary and will likely need access to a broad array of technologies. High-speed networks, video-based collaboration, high-resolution visualization, and 3-D printing are but a few of the digital tools that will find their way into the learning space.
The ability to rearrange furniture and technology quickly and easily will be highly desirable. Some project activities will need nothing more than comfortable furniture, food, and caffeine. Others will require sophisticated computational analysis and the ability to do rapid prototyping.
Acoustics will be a concern and will need to accommodate a wide range of activities. It seems likely that such space will support more than one team or activity simultaneously. That will be a highly desirable trait, fostering serendipitous discovery and innovation.
The ability to quickly and easily capture the group's activities and progress will also be desirable. An emerging class of powerful and effective collaboration tools enables project teams to save and store project elements, resources, concepts, plans, designs, models, and renderings-in short, all the "stuff" that a team might find or make."
Jon Evans releases two novels as free ebooks. Both had previously been paid print releases.
As a side note, both are thrillers - Invisible Armies is about hackers, anti-corporate protestors, globalization, and the surveillance society; Swarm is about fleets of UAVs in The Wrong Hands
"The concept behind My Resource Cloud is that each educator tailors interactive content to suit the needs of their own learners.
My Resource Cloud consists of a number of resource sections: My Language Cloud, My Math(s) Cloud, My Science Cloud and My ICT Cloud.
My Resource Cloud allows users to integrate web, printed, mobile and social media based technologies to help motivate learners."
"OpenStax College offers students free textbooks that meet scope and sequence requirements for most courses. These are peer-reviewed texts written by professional content developers. Adopt a book today for a turnkey classroom solution or modify it to suit your teaching approach. Free online and low-cost in print, OpenStax College books are built for today's student budgets."
Good article on the differences between comprehension of online versus printed texts. Ch starting on p3 is good and some of the teaching strategies could have application for us.
"The $139 Kindle is a game changer. 2011 will be the year that the traditional paper coursepack (finally) disappears, to be replaced by a default digital version with the option to print on demand. And if things go right, the Kindle should be the dominant coursepack delivery platform."
Screen Australia's Digital Resource Finder is a quick, convenient and easy-to-use search engine for teachers and educators. It features FREE FOR EDUCATION downloadable video clips from Screen Australia's remarkable archive-one of the nation's largest and most historically significant collections. Clips are matched with print-friendly two-page resource sheets that include background information and engaging student research and classroom activities written by leading teachers.
Description: It took tens of thousands of years for writing to emerge after speech, thousands more before the printing press was invented, and a few hundred more for the telegraph to arrive. Today, new ways of relating are constantly created and a new communication medium emerges every time someone creates a web application-a Flickr here, a Twitter there. How can we use new media to foster the kinds of communication and community we desire in education? This presentation will discuss both successful and unsuccessful attempts to integrate emerging technologies into the classroom to create a rich virtual learning environment.
"Blanchard's and Moore's research finds that developmental milestones are changing as a new generation of young children approach learning and literacy in ways not thought possible in the past. According to this new report, digital media is already transforming the language and cultural practices that enable early literacy development, making possible a new kind of personal and global interconnectedness.
The research reveals that:
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Opportunities to engage with digital media increasingly prevail through the use of mobile devices-and in developing countries access to mobile devices is more commonplace than access to other technologies
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Developmental milestones are changing as young people's access to mobile and digital technology grows.
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Digital media positively impacts children's opinion of learning, providing engagement opportunities not always seen with print materials."
This article defines transliteracy as "the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks" and opens the debate with examples from history, orality, philosophy, literature, and ethnography.
"Digital Information Fluency (DIF) is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically. DIF involves Internet search skills that start with understanding how digital information is different from print information, knowing how to use specialized tools for finding digital information and strengthening the dispositions needed in the digital information environment. As teachers and librarians develop these skills and teach them to students, students will become better equipped to achieve their information needs."
"Respondus is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to Blackboard, ANGEL, Desire2Learn, eCollege, Moodle, and other eLearning systems. Exams can be created offline using a familiar Windows environment, or moved from one eLearning system to another. Whether you are a veteran of online testing or relatively new to it, Respondus will save you hours on each project. "