Potential of PressbooksEDU �Open Education Week Webinar for eCampusOntario
Steel Wagstaff, Educational Client Manager, Pressbooks
Slides posted to Twitter @SteelWagstaff this morning �
Online Webinar | March 5, 2019
Pressbooks is “an online book publishing platform that makes it easy to generate clean, well-formatted books in multiple outputs. Pressbooks is built on WordPress and is open source.”
— Hugh McGuire, Pressbooks founder
Right: Each Pressbooks instance is a centrally-managed network of books. eCampusOntario’s network lives at https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub
At right: Each network also features a sortable catalog of publicly listed books
Webbook Homepage
Each book has a unique web address. Books can have different structures, themes, licenses & permissions. Each book’s homepage includes:
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Above: The reading interface in a Pressbooks webbook, including the Table of Contents and navigation options.
Below: Export options page. Pressbooks makes it easy to export your webbook to several different formats, including EPUB, MOBI, PDF, XML, XHTML, HTMLBook, and OpenDocument (ODT).
Editing Interface
AT RIGHT: Pressbooks uses a standard WordPress visual/text HTML editor. Editing text & inserting media is as easy as using a word processor.
Several collaborators can work together on the same book with different roles & permissions (admin, editor, author, etc.)
Organizing a Book
AT RIGHT: Pressbooks features a drag-and-drop chapter organization interface. You can create front & back matter, as well as two-level ‘part’ & ‘chapter’ organization for main content.
Content can be published/hidden from web & included/excluded in exports (ePUB, PDF, etc.) separately.
Common Uses for Pressbooks
Replace $$$ Textbooks
Training, Outreach, Distance Education
Public Domain Anthologies
Student & Community Authored Projects
EXTENDING PRESSBOOKS
Ideas for “going beyond print”
Português Para Principiantes is a Brazilian Portuguese language textbook first published in 1964 (and last revised in 1993). The digital edition of this free, online text now includes 30 audio dialogues, 1000+ vocabulary words (pronounced by native speakers), and 120+ interactive assessments (via H5P).
Examples of embedded media in Pressbooks:
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INTERACTIVE ELEMENTS
Add interactive elements (YouTube videos, PHET simulations, open assessments) by simply pasting the URL into the editor.
Placeholder links for interactive elements added to export formats that don’t support interactivity
H5P ACTIVITIES
Create interactive H5P elements (like quizzes, image hotspots, slideshows, & interactive videos) from the Pressbooks dashboard
Full list of 40+ unique H5P Content Types at https://h5p.org/content-types-and-applications
Examples of H5P activities embedded in Pressbooks. At left: An image hotspot interactive from a sample ePortfolio built by Emily Hunt at Indiana University. At right: A flashcard activity built by Naomi Salmon at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
SOCIAL ANNOTATION
Use Hypothesis to add a flexible annotation layer for rich public social annotation, class discussion or editorial review in private groups, or personal highlighting & note taking (marginalia)
Web annotation can be more than text on text
At left: Sample Pressbooks chapter with public Hypothesis annotations
Steel’s iAnnotate 2018 talk includes more ideas for Hypothesis + Pressbooks
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FINDING OPEN CONTENT
High-quality OER are abundant but can be hard to find. Start with the Mason OER Metafinder* or SUNY’s OASIS* and ask a librarian.
* These meta-search tools search several large OER repositories simultaneously, including the Open Textbook Library maintained by University of Minnesota; �the OpenStax CNX project out of Rice University; BCcampus’ OpenED textbooks; California’s Merlot II repository; and the OER Commons.
CLONING
Any public, openly licensed book can now be quickly & easily cloned from one Pressbooks network to another.
SOURCE COMPARISON
Cloned books will display a link to the source text on the book homepage.
A comparison tool can also be enabled to show differences between a cloned book and its source.
Above: Source information in a sample cloned book.
Below: The ‘Enable Source Comparison’ option available in in ‘Appearance’ -> ’Theme Options’ -> ‘Web Options.’
Below: A sample view of the ‘Show Comparison’ tool for a cloned book which has been edited from the original.
IMPORTING
If you find openly licensed content that isn’t already in Pressbooks but exists in WXR, EPUB, ODT, DOCX, or HTML format(s), you can import it.
Right: The ‘Add a New Book’ option under ‘My Catalog” in the Pressbooks admin bar. To import content, first create a new book.
Below: The import interface in Pressbooks. To import content, select the file type, upload the file, and follow the instructions. We’ve recently added support for a number of shortcodes to make working and importing from Word documents even easier.
Video demo of an EPUB import from Project Gutenberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTyDoj-iwLw
Learn More
Questions?
Email: steel@pressbooks.com