LearnShifting

I did what most folks did, downloaded ibooks 2.0 and read about the new features... I was going to paste the link but I am sure Apple won't mind if I promote iBooks 2.0 by copying in their promotional text. It is a free download for your i-everything from the app store.

Introducing iBooks 2 — now with iBooks textbooks.

• Experience gorgeous Multi-Touch textbooks designed for iPad
• iBooks textbooks are filled with interactive features, diagrams, photos, and videos
• Tap to dive into images with interactive captions, rotate 3D objects, swipe through image galleries, watch videos in full screen, and more
• Use a finger as a highlighter when swiping over text in a textbook
• Take advantage of Study Cards to help you memorize important highlights, notes, and glossary terms
• Tap glossary terms to see definitions of key topics and concepts without leaving the page

The iBookstore offers textbooks on Algebra, Biology, Chemistry, Geometry, and Physics from McGraw-Hill and Pearson.
These textbooks are currently available to customers in the United States. Textbooks from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are coming soon.

iBooks textbooks are created with iBooks Author — now available as a free download on the Mac App Store.

Along with iBooks 2.0 comes a new and free authoring tool called ibooks Author, which only works on a mac and the books you create only play on an iPad... so there is an immediate dilemma for a school jurisdiction with only 3% of our computer fleet consisting of iPads.

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This entry was posted on February 1, 2012 at 10:37 AM and has received 45 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Alison introduced me to a $4.50 iPad app yesterday called Creative Book Builder which allows you to create eBooks/iBooks on your iPad. I have focused in the past on solutions that start on the Windows platform because our standard operating environment is Windows and our teachers and corporate staff have Dell laptops issued to them.

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This entry was posted on October 5, 2011 at 7:07 AM and has received 535 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I have been on this quest to offer a solution to teachers that would enable them to create a talking book. I had a few criteria though.

• You had to be able to use free tools to do it.
• It couldn’t be something that teachers thought was too difficult and not worth the effort
• It had to play on the iPad
• It had to play on other devices as well, including Windows
• As the book was read, words would highlight. (Don’t get too excited by this – it is not there yet, but more on that later)
• I also wanted teachers to be able to share the books with students and other teachers who had iPads without going through iTunes

I need to tell you that this has been a long time coming and I feel that out of our teaching community, about 90% would be able to create an eBook without audio after about ten minutes guidance (ie reading this blog entry) and of that group, half would be willing to have a go at adding audio and video to their book.

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This entry was posted on August 21, 2011 at 5:26 PM and has received 497 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

Inception Strategies creates comic books with incredible artwork and powerful messages for young people of today. Focussing on youth issues in indigenous urban and rural environments there are powerful messages in these comics. There are some themes that are really aimed at the teen+ age group so I don't suggest the material is appropriate for primary school children. Well now you can view these comic books online...

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This entry was posted on September 10, 2010 at 10:37 AM and has received 374 views. There are currently 3 comments. Print this entry.

Success! Well sort of. Smashwords converted my simple two page chilli recipe into a book, complete with picture. It converted it into several formats and advised me that it was being dispatched to a number of publishers.

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This entry was posted on August 9, 2010 at 7:35 AM and has received 223 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

In my previous post I mentioned that eBooks can be published to a variety of platforms and for distribution purposes, the more devices that can read your books the better. An organisation that prepares and distributes your eBooks to channels like Amazon and ITunes store for free is Smashwords. Using their Microsoft Word template (actually a document I edited from one of their books) and AFTER reading and understanding the free how to guide on how to publish on Smashwords.com.

As I am writing this, I hope that smashwords is quietly working in the background converting my small two page book into an eBook. Don't forget that you will need to create a book cover. With the template above, you get a free Mark Christie chilli recipe thrown in - my TLC sauce.

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This entry was posted on August 6, 2010 at 6:35 AM and has received 247 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I know I am being brand specific here, but please think about any portable device like a smartphone that has the ability to display text and pictures on a screen and you actually look cool sitting on the train, plane or bus as you swish your finger and tap away on the non-reflective glass screen.

I have a good friend who is a publications expert. He packages notes created by scientists into fact sheets, reports, how to documents and even books for the general public.

Over the years this home grown library of documents related mainly to primary industries such as cattle, fish and horticultural industries has expanded and transformed from a print only library of paper based documents that are given away to existing farmers or even backyard enthusiasts to a magnificent online library of documents in formats ranging from pdf documents to streaming video presentations.

This friend, Jason, rang me the other day and asked me about how to put some of these documents onto an iPhone. Brilliant I thought. Here is a guy always trying to improve the way he can deliver his service to customers. His observation was that he had attended a number of cattleman's events over recent times and could not get over the fact that every one seemed to have an iPhone. So making the logical assumption that if they have the delivery mechanism or rather reading mechanism in their top pocket, why not offer up the ability to put information in their pocket in the form of eBooks.

My response to Jason's question was - "well you upload it to itunes into a library and then they download it". Sounds simple, but I thought to myself - I haven't done it before so how hard is it really?

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This entry was posted on August 5, 2010 at 4:24 AM and has received 275 views. There are currently 2 comments. Print this entry.