Dear colleagues,
As hundreds of schools move quickly to transition in-progress classes to online/distance delivery in hopes of slowing the global spread of COVID-19, we know that you and many of the instructors & learners you support may be feeling stressed and worried.
As you work through your own instructional continuity plans, my Pressbooks support colleagues and I would be happy to organize and host webinars providing quick and simple Pressbooks end user training to folks in your learning communities. We donât want to pile more work/obligations on people, of course, but do want to help if and how we can during these extraordinary times!
The University of Wisconsin has already requested a virtual training session for tomorrow afternoon, for example. Weâd be more than happy to open up these trainings to more people, to record them, or even to hold âopen office hoursâ or âask me anythingâ sessions if theyâd help lessen your support burdens. If you have other ideas for how we can work together to help instructors and learners at your institution, please let us know (you can reply to this announcement or email us at premiumsupport@pressbooks.com).
Finally, over this past weekend I wrote up some advice for instructors moving online (in a purely personal capacity) which you can read on my website or Medium. TL;DR: Keep it simple, use existing content & open tools, collaborate with librarians, be compassionate! Itâs CC-BY licensed, so feel free to share or adapt if you find anything in there useful for your context.
All best,
Steel (& the rest of the Pressbooks team)
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Opening them up or recording them might be helpfulâŚAs you stated, everyone is pretty intense right nowâtrying to move courses online and suchâbut Iâm sure these trainings will be helpful for the broader Pressbooksâ community in some capacity. (IMO)
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If you didnât see it, our CEO Hugh shared a message on our blog and via email recently along similar lines: https://pressbooks.com/2020/03/16/covid-19-training-infrastructure-and-stay-safe/
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@paradisojr and others, a Pressbooks user training (originally requested by Wisconsin, but open to anyone) will be held from 2:30-4pm Central Time tomorrow (Tuesday, March 17). Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/5125249718. We will record the session and are happy to schedule others in the coming weeks as needed.
Rough description of topics to be covered:
Introduction to basic Pressbooks tasks:
- Creating a new book
- Adding book information (metadata) and selecting a license
- Creating front matter, back matter, parts, and chapters
- Using the editor to edit a chapter (creating headings, body text, links, media, embedded content, textboxes, footnotes, glossary terms, etc.)
- Importing content (from Word documents, EPUBs, XML, etc.)
- Changing a bookâs theme and theme options
- Exporting a book into offline formats (EPUB, PDF, etc)
Demonstration of EDU-specific features:
- Cloning an openly licensed book
- Adding tables, textboxes, and images
- Creating interactive activities in the book (using H5P)
- Using mathematical notation (MathJax/LaTeX)
- Enable web annotation for books (with Hypothesis)
- Making export files available for download to visitors
- How to get help and front-line support for their network from published guides and their network managers
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Thanks to everyone who joined the user training webinar today. Recording will be captioned & shared publicly soon. Participants in the webinar also started an open list of âprosocial non-internet based things to do while practicing social distancing,â in case youâre looking for ideas or have tips to contribute to others: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17B6pIJJpGTGXdJPGcp4cdiD3DZa4-4wXBEcsYjJvFH4/edit. Hope youâre coping well, caring for your people, and savoring the good in your lives!
Hi @EDU_Managers â the recording from the Pressbooks user training webinar we held earlier this month has been processed with captions and is now available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWr5oYbDPJ0. Hope some of you find it helpful!
All best,
Steel
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