The Challenge of ebooks: Workshop one

Yesterday I was in London for the first workshop towards the new JISC funded project The challenge of eBooks in academic institutions run by Ken Chad. The two hour session gathered a range of stakeholders to discover what the priorities are for institutions around the creation, curation and consumption of digital books. Here are my notes on the workshop:

  • There are major accessibility issues with current ebooks from publishers who aren’t building accessible ebooks from the start. Retrofitting accessibility is costing the sector vast sums of time and therefore money.
  • Issue – how to support remote access to resources and staff 24/7
  • Issue – publishers are often public companies and only concerned with share price so unless they see “growth areas” things won’t change.
  • The future is for either very small collaborations and projects or very large. The medium ground is tough
  • We need a collection of real use-cases. For example, there is a need for ebooks that once on a reader device can be read without the need for “checking-in – feature of some DRM tools” as the reader may not always be online (mobility can have its challenges) or “I want to see all my groups notes from this reading”
  • There is a need to definite the entire system we are talking about, I suggested Craig Mod’s Post-artifact system as a starting point
  • A series of “myth busters” is needed, hat-tip to Amber Thomas
  • Innovation and disruption are needed asap and this won’t likely come from most publishers anytime soon
  • We need to make sure we focus on the goal of using digital technologies to help teaching, learning and research. What are the unique selling points of digital books that we should be using e.g. social features such as highlighting and note sharing for learning purposes
  • A more detailed report of the workshop was made by Phil Barker from JISC Cetis

01 Why bother with ebooks?

Mobile everything has been much hyped over the past few years with figures of device ownership and network activity usage both up, up and away. Within the mobile space, one topic t intrigues me more than others, which is the idea of the digital book, made possible by ebook readers, tablets, computers and software. The NMC Horizon report, an annual look at what’s hot in education and technology has been waving the flag for ebooks since 2010  saying that by 2012 ebooks should be beginning to hit their stride and gaining widespread use. I think they might just be right.

The current digital book is largely relegated to hastily cobbled together editions of existing print books wrapped in an often poorly built PDF file. I can live with this, knowing that there must be light at the end of the tunnel (hopefully not a train) as duplicating print books has been tried, and now we have begun to look at that is next. Whilst I do believe that benefits such as having access to a library at my fingertips, fast searching and 24/7 distribution are great features, those alone are only scratching at the surface of what a digital book could be.

In Post-Artifact Books and Publishing Craig Mod writes:

  • The way books are written has changed.
  • The canvas for books has changed.
  • The post-published life of a book has changed.

Suddenly these three sentences thrust what digital books are becoming into the light. I feel it is worth considering each in context of education.

The way books are written has changed.

The process used to be be of isolation with author> select reviewers > Publisher > seller. Martin Weller’s 2011 book The Digital Scholar came into being in part from his public blog writing on many of the thoughts and topics that went on to become the book. The comments and statistics could have been one method of seeing what “sticks” to inform the book process. Which was then further honed by his tribe using various social tools.

Over the past year or so I have been following with interest as Gráinne Conole writes Designing for learning in an open world, sharing each chapter of it, using the web to “…act as a space to invite discussion and debate on emergent issues. ”

We are able to use ‘digital’ tools and communications to reach those at whom the book is aimed from day zero. Services like Kickstarter have enabled people to float an idea for a book and get the funding BEFORE day 1.

The canvas for books has changed.

We now have a countless number of ways to read digital books. From dedicated hardware such as the Amazon Kindle, to tablets such as the Apple iPad, Google Nexus 7 and more mainstream computers and mobile phones with book reading capabilities. These devices along with ‘apps’ let us read on a digital book on a new type of canvas from print.

My current favourite reader is the ibis reader which allows me to upload EPUB books and access them on all my devices and sync the page I am reading so i can effortlessly move from one reading device to the next. At the 2012 Digital Book conference, Liz Daly, creator of ibis reader spoke about the possibility of streaming books becoming a possible future (spotify for ebooks), helping us become file format and device agnostic.

I can imagine a near future where education book release will be “digital by default”, saving print for core texts.

The post-published life of a book has changed.

A digital book never has to be complete, like Wikipedia, edits can be made and released with ease. New versions being released as “dot” versions much like how software upgrades are done. Being digital, the book may be discovered by a far greater amount of people, and will be easily distributed via established library catalogues and newer services like Apple iTunes U. Services like Amazon allow you to publicly share your ebook reading lists and highlights,  suddenly these unique digital social features might start to find usefulness for education books. Teacher and learner sharing notes on the same books, this opens the door to potential new pedagogical exploration.

I am now reading as many digital books as I am print books and I continue to marvel at the idea of what is coming next.

How to copy images to Google Nexus 7

Showing the drag and drop between 2 folders

To copy images from your computer to the nexus 7 you need to drag and drop the photos from your computer across to the photos folder on the tablet.

Notice I said DRAG, it won’t allow you to copy and paste, hopefully this gets fixed as it is annoying!

If you are using a Mac, first you need to install Android File Transfer which will automatically pop up when connected to the tablet.

First edit to wikipedia

Today marks my first ever edit to Wikipedia and I thought i’d mark the occasion with this post as a reminder.

I am in the process of creating an ebook from M.R. James short ghost stories, starting with ‘Ghost Stories of an Antiquary’. I am using a print edition as the blueprint and noticed that the Wikipedia entry was  inaccurate in two places: the title of Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book should be lowercase ‘b’ and ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ was missing an ‘,’ after Whistle… i know!

Proof of my edits are immortalised in the Wikipedia entry revision log.

I now join an even rarer level of N*E*R*D (which itself is a reference…)

100 Things about digital publishing in education

Welcome to 100 things about digital publishing in education. Join me as I discover how learners, staff and institutions make and use digital books for traditional and emerging practices. Lets explore what is unique about ‘digital publishing’ from the view of the people affected. I believe it is an interesting topic and hope 100 things will inform and inspire more of you to try digital publishing and ebooks. If you would like to contribute or heckle, please do get in touch as I’d love to hear your views.

  1. Why bother with ebooks?
  2. ebook testing kit
  3. Under the cover of the mrc ebook
  4. Publishing jargon

The new HLF policy

The Heritage Lottery Fund has just announced new policy and requirements for projects from July 2012.

IT Services R&D /ILRT including myself had a hand in producing the new requirements and it is great to see positive feedback on this move to allow digital only projects with the HLF. We quietly worked on the guidance and delivered a series of workshops around the UK to HLF staff. Something that I am really proud of is that all projects will be using Creative Commons Licensing which we hope will enable new uses and help prove better value for use of public money.

 

 

idpf 2012 Digital book conference

idpf have just released all of the session recordings and slides.

At IDPF Digital Book 2012 you’ll hear about the latest business and technical developments in the rapidly evolving digital publishing industry.

Of particular interest was the recording of Liza Daly’s ‘streaming ebooks‘ session which is well worth a listen.

The research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students

JISC have released the results of a 3 year study into my generation (Y) research studying behaviour.

Our research findings reveal:

  • Doctoral students are increasingly reliant on secondary research resources (eg journal articles, books), moving away from primary materials (eg primary archival material and large datasets).
  • Access to relevant resources is a major constraint for doctoral students’ progress. Authentication access and licence limitations to subscription-based resources, such as e-journals, are particularly problematic.
  • Open access and copyright appear to be a source of confusion for Generation Y doctoral students, rather than encouraging innovation and collaborative research.
  • This generation of doctoral students operate in an environment where their research behaviour does not use the full potential of innovative technology.
  • Doctoral students are insufficiently trained or informed to be able to fully embrace the latest opportunities in the digital information environment.

These findings raise important questions about research development, training and support within research led organisations and the openness and sharing of research.

I say WHY are things the way they are.

Read the study.

Directory of ebook resources in education

My search for articles, presentations, recordings, books etc on the all topics around ebooks and digital publishing has been frustrating. To help me collate my findings and hopefully support others I have created a Google Document listing all found items. The document can be viewed and edited by anybody so please do help me build this into something of value:

Ebooks and digital publishing in Education and research, Google Document

 

Design Jam Bristol: gallery UX challenges

On Saturday 16th June myself and around 20 other strangers rocked up to Spike Island* in Bristol for a user experience (UX) Day called Design Jam Bristol.

As with the typical wonder of discover I found out about the event from a RT on twitter from a London UX pro.

Ever since I started to create ‘things’ for other people I have been interested in how those things are discovered, used, misused or neglected. The summary of the day grabbed my attention:

Design Jam is a one-day design session, during which people will team up to tackle engaging User Experience (UX) challenges. Similar to developer ‘hackdays’ the aim is to get UX professionals, designers, developers (and more) together to learn and collaborate with each other while working on actual design problems. The sessions champion open-source thinking & sharing and are non-profit, run by local volunteers.

After a tour of the building (they do a lot!) we got chunked into random groups (me, Keir, Robin and Tom) and cracked on with the task which was to explore how to encourage everyday folk to visit art space and galleries like Spike that were compelling and rewarding. The following are some of my own thoughts as well as the group around making art spaces a Celebration:

  • We ARE the user – most of us had never been to Spike island before
  • discovery ain’t easy – even when you are near the building you’d have no idea. We thought of ‘maplines’ to offer various guides around the stuff on offer
  • Art spaces can be intimidating
  • The experience starts from the very first interaction with the words/building and should be considered part of the staff/artists remit. Three states: pre, during and post-visit
  • What should anybody care about these spaces?
  • Let us talk, take photos, videos and make our our interpretations
  • How can digital be used to help the artist and visitor make connections e.g. put communication methods with the work
  • ‘speak to the curb’ attract passing traffic – from the outside what does the building communicate?
  • Consider ‘the wall’ which mixes physical communication and captures online
  • Destroy and rebuild what these spaces are for – this non typical event dragged my carcass to spike
  • View the PDF (12mb) of some of our thoughts used for our presentation

I like free stuff, used to paint a bunch, made digital pieces and like to support local events… yet rarely do I dip into the art spaces available across the uk. For me personally it is partly due to being completely unaware of what is happening. I now mostly discover things from my networks such as twitter so it is essentially art spaces not only have a presence here but realise that it is likely a link removed from the organisation itself that will get me through the door. Make it easy for us to point to you, ask you questions and reflect on our points of interaction. Come to us, help us and we’ll reward you with visits and actively spread the word.

I would like to thank the organisers, other teams and my own team for a thought provoking and entertaining day.

* This was my first visit to Spike island…..