lodeStar Learning Web Journal

By Robert N. Bilyk

The power of the eBook has come to LodeStar. With the same ease that instructors can create any LodeStar learning object, they can now create their own eBooks.

Instructors will find eBooks a powerful new addition to their communications strategy. Currently, instructors create learning objects to engage learners with the content. They commonly use discussion forums, email, chat, and the phone to communicate with students. Now they can create an electronic book that can be downloaded by the student, taken offline, bookmarked and annotated.

Instructors use the same procedure to create an eBook as they would to create any other LodeStar activity. They choose the eBookMaker Template and turn it into a project. They fill in their content, fill in the IMS Manifest, and then export. One of the export options in LodeStar 5.5 is – you guessed it – ‘eBook’!

But why create an eBook? I’ll list the top 8 compelling reasons.

1. eBooks are easy to read. Students can quickly adjust the font size, page width, and page layout. The text rendering in such products as Adobe Digital Editions* is excellent.

2. eBooks are easy to search. Students can type in key words and quickly find matches in the text. Student can easily move from match to match and then bookmark those matches that are relevant to them.

3. Students can take an eBook offline. The LodeStar-generated eBook is easily downloaded into the Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) reader and stored in the ADE library.

4. eBooks are easily updated by the instructor. In today’s world information changes at internet speed. Planets get downgraded to dwarfs. Countries change names. New theories and discoveries render old views obsolete. Instructors can change content and quickly publish the new edition.

5. eBooks created with LodeStar can display text, images, and animations.

6. eBooks are green. eBooks don't kill trees unless, of course, students print out the eBooks, which is very easy to do.

7. eBooks can be downloaded into readers like the Sony PRS series of readers. The eBook produced by the LodeStar authoring tool follows the International Digital Publisher’s Forum EPUB specification. Students can use handheld readers, like the Sony PRS 505, that support EPUB.

8. eBooks are gaining in popularity. Today thousands of eBook titles are available for pure educational use, but also for commercial use. Dozens of eBook shops exist on the web such as eBooks.com. The future for eBooks is bright, particularly as new cell phones and mobile operating systems emerge on the market and are likely to embrace open specifications like the IDPF EPUB.

Some examples:

To view some examples of eBooks created with LodeStar, see these stored in Curriki. In the first example, note the inclusion of captioned images and animation.

(Be sure to install Adobe Digital Editions. In Curriki, click on the Download button.)

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_bbilyk/InstructionalDesign

In the second example, view a traditional book layout with chapters.
http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_bbilyk/TheFourthHorsemaneBook

Steps to creating an eBook in LodeStar 5.5

Step One:

Encourage your students to download the Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) reader. The download takes less than a minute for students at DSL Speeds, and renders eBooks beautifully. ADE also supports PDF files.

Adobe Digital Editions can be downloaded at http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/

Step Two: In LodeStar, select the eBookMaker template.

Step Three: Add pages and enter in your content.

Step Four: Check the Metadata Application Profile. Select Tools > Metadata Application Profile. Select Mode and then click on ‘OK’ (Class Server users will have to remember to switch this back to Default before publishing to Microsoft Class Server)
Please note: For eBook publishing, any of the profiles will work, except the Default Profile.

Step Five: Select Tools > IMS Manifest Maker. Fill in the following five items:

General-Learning Object Title
General - Coverage
Lifecycle - Contributor Identify > Name
Copyright - Description
Classification - Discipline

When you're done, click on the 'Save Manifest' button.

________

Step Six: Export your eBook Select Export > Create Export File.

The wizard will guide you step by step through the export process.
On the last page of the wizard, select eBook from the pull-down menu.
Click on the 'Create Export' button.
By default your eBook will reside in the LodeStar Exports folder under the project title. The ebook will be named [project name].epub

Step Seven:
Upload your eBook to a publicly accessible web site or to your learning management system as an attachment.

Here is a critical point. If you link to your eBook or make it available as a downloadable attachment, then when the student clicks on the eBook, he or she will get the following message:

Do you want to open or save this file?

On some servers that recognize the mimetype of an eBook, you will see the name of the eBook ending with .epub. The student can then choose to either run or save the eBook.
On most servers that don’t recognize the mimetype of an eBook, you will see the name of the eBook ending with .zip. The student should then choose to save the eBook, but with the extension ending in .epub. That’s critical. The downloaded file must end with .epub.
The student can then use the following steps to load the saved .epub file into Adobe Digital Editions.

1. Launch Adobe Digital Editions.
2. Go to the Library View.
3. Select ‘Add Item to Library’
4. Browse to the location of the downloaded eBook file, select and open.
5. The eBook is now available for student annotation, bookmarking and searching.

We hope you enjoy this new capability of the LodeStar eLearning authoring tool. If you create some examples, let me know at support@LodeStarLearning.com.

By Robert N. Bilyk

The Curriki Project is based on a powerful concept: Educators all over the world contribute learning resources to the Curriki community site (http://www.curriki.org) and make them freely available to teachers for the benefit of students. Nothing could be simpler or nobler.

The LodeStar Authoring tool is based on another powerful concept: Provide educators all over the world with an inexpensive tool and free templates to build rich, interactive learning content.

The combination of the LodeStar Authoring tool and the Curriki site presents a wonderful new opportunity to provide world-class content to teachers and their students.

Curriki was initially inspired by Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems co-founder. He envisioned providing teachers all over the world with equal access to high-quality educational resources. The ensurer of equal access was a site where learning resources could be easily found and used free of charge.

Today, Curriki relies on a leadership team, headed by Dr.Barbara-Bobbi Kurshan, Anne Schreiber, and Joshua Marks. Curriki relies on support from foundations and organizations like NROC (National Repository of Online Courses) who have large collections of educational content; and on individuals and entities dedicated to the principle of equal access; and, as importantly, it relies on the contributions of individual teachers who are willing to share their learning resources.

Teachers, curriculum developers, and publishers contribute teaching and learning resources to Curriki under one of several licenses that define open and shareable content that is free of charge to Curriki users. When contributors submit content to Curriki, they attach a Creative Commons license to the content. The licenses explicitly allow contributors to make their content open and shareable without losing their rights to the content. Depending on the license, contributors can make their content shareable but with restrictions. For example, users may be restricted to non-commercial use of the content or restricted from creating derivative works.

The LodeStar Learning community which understands Creative Commons licensing - as well as how to produce rich, interactive content - is in a strong position to support the Curriki vision. Since LodeStar Learning’s start in 2003, we’ve observed hundreds of teachers creating outstanding resources that are now being kept behind closed doors. LodeStar authors typically target learning management systems like Moodle, Desire2Learn, Blackboard and the Microsoft Sharepoint Learning Kit. Curriki provides an opportunity for those teachers to publish their work to a wider audience and to support the free distribution of world-class learning resources to anyone who needs them.

This article is dedicated to the mechanics of making that happen. The article assumes that you are a LodeStar user. If you are not, go to http://www.lodestarlearning.com/ where you can obtain a free trial license and where you can find the 'Learn LodeStar' Link that will provide you with tutorials to help you get started. Then you will be ready to follow the steps below.

If you are a LodeStar user, follow these simple steps to upload learning resources to the Curriki site:

Step One: Register to Join Curriki. Go to the www.curriki.org website and click on ‘Become a member.’ The site will guide you from there.

Step Two: Apply Creative Commons licenses to your project. Do so by following these steps:

1. Open or create your project in the LodeStar Authoring tool.
2. Select Tools > Intellectual Property
3. Click on each license icon to learn about the different licenses covered under the Creative Commons licensing scheme.
4. Click on the check boxes to indicate which licenses you wish to attach to your project. You must, at least, check off Attribution.
5. Fill in your name in the Author field or the name of the author to whom attribution belongs.

Step Three: Export your LodeStar Project by following these steps. Please note, that Curriki supports IMS content pages, but does not read in the metadata information nor does it report scores to any management system.

1. Open your project, if not already open.
2. Select Tools >Metadata Application Profile
3. Select MODE.
4. Click on ‘Ok’. (You only need to do this once per computer.)
5. Select Tools > IMS Manifest Maker
6. Fill in the Manifest, especially Organization – Module Title and Organization – Topic Title
7. Click on ‘Save Manifest’ button. Close dialog box.
8. Select Export > Create Export File
9. Click on the ‘Next’ button, paying attention at every step to where your zip file will be saved.
10. Keep the default ‘SCORM 1.3 (Recommended)’ selected at the very end.
11. Pay attention to the location under Export File Name.
12. Click on ‘Create Export’ button.

Step Four: Log in to your Curriki account at www. Curriki.org and follow these steps in order to import a LodeStar learning object (project) into Curriki.

1. From the Quick Launch area on the left side of the site, click on ‘Contribute’ and then click on ‘Add a Resource’.
2. In the ‘Add to Curriki’ dialog, click on the ‘Browse’ button. Browse to the exported file from the previous step. It should be a zip file that ends with the .zip extension. Once, you have selected your file, Click the ‘Next’ button.
3. Fill in each field on the form, and then click on ‘Next’.
4. Update each field on the form, as needed. Pay close attention to the last field. This is the Creative Commons License Deed. Choose the license type that matches the license that you chose in Step Two. Click on ‘Next’.
5. In the dialog box that appears, click on ‘Go to my contributions’.
6. You will now see a list of your contributions. Next to the most recently contributed resource, click on the ‘Edit’ action.
7. You will now see the Curriculum Builder Page where you must make one final edit to your resource. In this step, you are telling Curriki which file to launch to start your learning object. This is a very important step. Click on the Edit link that is indicated by the black arrow in the screenshot below.

8. Click on the ‘Show Files’ button.
9. Scroll down until you see the + sign next to a folder name. Click on the plus sign so that it reveals the files in that folder. Click on ‘index.htm’. Then click on ‘Save’. Finally, click on ‘Close’.
10. You test your resource by viewing your list of contributions and then clicking on the title of your latest contribution. Click on the ‘Start’ button. Your LodeStar resource should now launch in its own window.

Your contribution to Curriki is now complete. As I wrote this article, I posted a resource to Curriki based on a pet project of my own that I think students will enjoy. Here are the results:

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Coll_bbilyk/ThePhotographicJournalChallenge/TheChallenge.zip/The%20Challenge/index.htm

LodeStar Learning is proud to support such an outstanding resource. If you have submitted a LodeStar Learning resource to Curriki, let us know by emailing us at support@LodeStarLearning.com.

Have a Happy New Year!!!