ELECTRIC BLOG
Some recent musings from the team staff...
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All of North America seems to be excited about April’s total solar eclipse. But not many know the story of how ancient astronomers used the observations of an eclipse to estimate the distance of the Earth to the Moon.
Some 2100 years ago, a solar eclipse had cast its shadow across the eastern Mediterranean region.
Observers back then had no fancy sunglasses to observe the phenomena and no maps from space agencies that plotted every single second of the shadow’s progress along the earth’s surface.
But they did have geometry.
And because of a keen eye of observation, along with some interesting assumptions regarding the distance of the stars and sun, early Greek astronomers were able to use their understanding of the angles within a triangle to estimate the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
Electric Book Company’s Origins by Geometry line describes the work done by the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus as he used information about the amount of sunlight that bled through the edge of the Moon’s disk to estimate the Moon’s distance.
The chapter ‘Hipparchus Estimates Distance to the Moon’ goes into the details of his work which gave a reasonable estimate – considering the only tools they had were the eyes to observe and some rudimentary geometric propositions.
Give the chapter a look. And those who choose this month’s eclipse – please do so safely!
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Just When Universities, Colleges, and Companies needed real innovation in E-Learning content….
It is no secret that the covid-19 situation has caused great pain to universities, colleges, government, and companies that deal with on-line training. All these organizations are facing the same problem --- how can the quality of online content be improved in terms instructional effectiveness while helping reduce cost of content acquisition and delivery.
For those schools and organizations planning their programs for next year, Electric Book Company is now offering development services for their ‘Study Suite’ offering.
A video showing a short example of how Study Suites work is available here.
In terms of post-secondary organizations, departments delivering training in algebra or physics that make use of textbooks published by OpenStax can now bundle their school’s instructional videos to serve as a video library (or ‘study suite’) that is text-searchable by students. In essence, the textbook serves as the launch site to search only the videos provided by the school for text terms of interest.
Schools or companies that have already invested significant resources into video production now have another outlet for that content by associating the collection with quality textbooks published by OpenStax. These study suites can be used by students with no need for complex integration with a formal Learning Management System. In addition, the suite can be used as a promotional vehicle, since study suites can be accessed by students anywhere – meaning your organization’s content can provide an important example of quality instruction which can help recruit students (or employees).
Currently, EBC supports Study Suite development for subjects in College Algebra and University Physics (but more titles are already in progress!).
Give the video a look, drop us a note, and let’s work together to turn today’s challenges into tomorrow’s opportunities!
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Sometimes, folks just naturally pick up new material quickly after being exposed to only one mode of presentation of a given topic.
Some can read an essay on constitutional law, comprehend it, internalize understanding, and apply their knowledge to deal with new experiences.
But when it comes to developing ‘new’ ways of thinking – thinking that involves a process of problem solving, sometimes one mode of presentation isn’t enough.
Book-like content, even excellent content developed by skilled authors and publishers, often isn’t enough in terms of helping a student break through to new thinking patterns demanded by complex material, especially material related to science and engineering.
If a student is ‘stuck’ on something, the repeated reading of the same text over and over often results in the person only digging more deeply into a sense of frustration.
That is probably why we have schools in the first place. When combined with well designed content, lectures provide a human voice to the new processes that are to be mastered by students. Sometimes, a teacher’s words that emphasize terms a bit differently, a narrative paced in a way that encourages reflection, or verbal expressions that highlight a successful approach are enough to open that new pathway of understanding for the listener.
But not all students have access to the best professors or lecturers as they try to master (or refresh) skills in math or science.
That is why, at Electric Book, we have started experimenting with merging the best in published content (text, images) with the ability to search for video within the context of a book title in one, mobile-friendly interface.
A consumer of one of the company’s electric booklets can now search through the title using keywords, or search for videos using the same keywords, in the same application, with the option to limit the search to content most relevant to a title. The result is a single, mobile web-page, that allows a reader to quickly flip between the text narrative of a problem solution, and a video that discusses a similar topic.
(One can see this early approach be opening one of the titles at the electric booklet site and Search → Video.)
The combination of video and ‘book’ adds the value of human phraseology to the quality and detail of text and graphics – all in an effort to bring multiple modes of presentation in an effort to better serve students in distance learning environments.
This addition of a new mode of search is the first step towards the development of the company’s ‘study-suites’, spaces of curated content where colleges, universities, and companies, can combine focused videos.
At Electric Book, this is just the first step in refining the integration of high quality content published under the Creative Commons license with new ways to search for, and use different forms of media to master understanding of STEM topics.
Stay tuned for more to come!
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Electric Book Company delivers educational resources that include reformatted segments of textbooks published under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC-BY), an arrangement that allows remixing the content for use in other commercial products so long as the distributor provides clear attribution to the original authors.
Creative Commons is only one organizational entity that is engaged in a broader initiative known as Open Educational Resources, or OER. Generally speaking, organizations that adhere to the OER philosophy work to develop instructional content licensed in a form to encourage the ‘5Rs’ which grants the public rights to a) retain ownership and control over, b) re-use, c) revise, d) remix and e) re-distribute content.
There is a wide range of opinions regarding the nature of Creative Commons licensing, many critical of the value proposition that such arrangements offer authors. OER is, in itself, a grassroots movement to break down cost barriers that inhibit access to otherwise costly instructional content.
Distributing content that costs little to nothing to consumers doesn’t appeal to creators who have bills to pay.
Given the altruistic ambitions of OER, content providers such as authors and artists may be forgiven if they ask the question, ‘why would anyone create a work that could be re-used by someone else to make money?’
Let’s consider why, under some circumstances, free-access makes sense, and how potential re-mixes of content can lead to new products.
Why give some stuff away? If you don’t, someone else will.
A gross simplification of the value proposition behind CC-BY licensing is that such a license provides authors with expanded reach of works that enhance their reputation as authors and researchers. Give stuff away for free, and, potentially, a lot of people will see your stuff and want to pay you for some other stuff.
But to an author, the idea of giving away a work that took years of effort is, well, insulting. A product is worth the price people pay for the it, isn’t it? The thought that consumers must pay for content that entertains, enlightens, or educates is something that makes far more sense than giving it away.
But that is not the perspective of the content consumer.
When it comes to the post-secondary environment, it is no secret that the selection and purchase cycle for academic textbooks isn’t what it used to be.
One survey indicated that while 68% of higher education instructors require textbooks, only sightly more than a third of faculty members report that 9 out of 10 students actually purchase the required textbook[1]. Many of those students who turn to alternate sources of instructional content resort to renting/buying used textbooks that may not be the edition suggested by the professor, using smart-phones to capture images of pages from friends’ books, or making use of no-cost online resources – everything from free e-books to YouTube videos.
Are such free resources of the quality and relevance that a course instructor is expecting? Maybe. Maybe not. But the student who doesn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on recommended texts will never know the difference --- as long as they succeed in the classroom. And the more students who succeed without the recommended text in tow, the more that other students will consider such alternatives.
The fact is that regardless of the quality of an author’s ‘traditional’ content, chances are that someone is distributing something similar for free.
That may not bother authors who are comfortable with the existing publishing model that allows writers to focus on content while publishers take care of sales and distribution. It still works, for the most part, as traditional print publishers move increasingly to digital products.
But other content creators, especially those new to the profession who are still building their careers, may choose to publicize their skill by introducing some titles into that same open-access environment as their ‘freebie’ competitors. The upside to such a choice is that such a free sample builds the author’s reputation not only as a writer, but as a subject matter expert, a reputation that may eventually lead to other revenue generating projects.
Why give stuff away to folks who may make money on your stuff? Consider it a form of R&D.
The CC-BY license allows other companies to re-mix content into derivative products, even products used for commercial (money making) purposes.
But in order for those downstream distributors to make money, the licensed content must be re-purposed into some other setting that generates revenue. That ‘other setting’ can provide the original content provider with an idea of the interests and needs of consumers who wouldn’t otherwise hand over cash for the original work.
In the case of academic textbooks, authors who watch a ‘freebie’ edition of a textbook wired into tutoring websites could be inspired to deliver newer works designed for use by tutors. Licensed content distributed to sites that encourage consumers to vote for (or grade) chapters by usefulness could provide insight that would result in improved content design for newer editions. Even looking at the advertising content on sites that re-distribute materials can give the original author better insight to the demographics of users, information that would be increasingly valuable as the marketplace of learners grows beyond traditional college and university settings.
It is easy enough to obtain data about existing customers who pay as they go. But using commercial partners can provide a glimpse into untapped markets that may be served by the same talents and resources that would otherwise remain locked to legacy content forms.
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Developing high quality instructional material is a demanding, sometimes grueling process. The production of good content requires dedication and commitment. Such a vocation is not for the faint of heart.
Clearly, no one should give away all their work and expect to make money. But it is a noisy world in which consumers are immersed in today’s access everywhere-anytime-at-no-cost content mindset. Content providers are well served to consider innovative tactics to gain visibility in a crowded field, and to use commercial partners to go beyond the ‘pay as you read’ business model in order to gain insights about one’s customers that would otherwise go unnoticed.
[1]Seaman, Julia, Seaman, Jeff. ‘Opening the Textbook: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2017’. Babson Survey Research Group, retrieved Jan 4, 2020 from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthetextbook2017.pdf
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The ability to write a textbook, especially a textbook about mathematics, science, or engineering, is a highly skilled craft.
Textbooks covering these subjects demand a presentation style that combines effective narrative with the use of images and illustrations modeling the topics under discussion (think about trying to explain a conic section without drawing one).
Given that the authoring and production of a high quality textbook is an expensive, time-consuming task, it is no wonder that publishers seek to maximize return by using one content model to drive distribution through as many channels and media forms as possible.
Delivering content to electronic media involves selecting from a number of approaches – re-flowable formats that change the amount of text presented based on the destination device page size, and fixed-layout – where designers keep image content locked to a page position to retain the artistic message which may rely heavily on the proper positioning of text and accompanying graphics.
It would be nice if such formats worked well for textbooks that focus on skills related to complex problem solving, but they don’t.
Yes, there are rendering standards (EPUB, Mobi, PDF), and a boatload of authoring tools that pretend to leverage the features of modern display devices. Nevertheless, current production technology is generally doing little more than producing content to be presented on devices (tablets, phones) that behave much like books of different page sizes.
But today’s phones aren’t books.
When electronic media renders content designed to develop problem solving skills requiring the tight integration of text and images, the user experience leaves much to be desired.
The re-flowable format which is most popular among e-book publishers is incapable of reliably maintaining a close proximity between text and illustration. The fixed-layout approach, useful for children's books or other works that include a good deal of graphic content, often results in inconsistent experiences across different devices.
It is time to try something different, a presentation model that a) minimizes eye travel between text and referenced illustrations (or at least makes such a distance consistent, and b) helps the eye stay focused on the narrative - rather than forcing they eye to wander the page in search of what needs to be read.
A first cut at trying to deal with such issues is represented by Electric Book’s new ‘Electric Booklet’ series.
Electric Booklets are add-on products to existing content published by OpenStax, the organizations producing free-of-charge textbooks under the creative commons license. These booklets re-distribute the example problems scraped from the book’s source code and re-packaged to implement some features that will take a step forward towards an improved experience for those trying to master problem-solving skills.
The presentation model provides the opportunity for readers to ‘single-step’ through a problem solving sequence, rendering only ‘chunks’ of content for each step. The idea is that the eye is naturally drawn to the last line shown on the screen, allowing the reader to more easily stay focused on the concept being emphasized.
The narrative area (text) and illustration area are bolted into dedicated portions of the display screen. While this doesn’t completely remove the need for the viewer to scan different parts of the page to find a referenced illustration, it does keep the viewing areas predictable and allows software to manage re-scaling of images to fit a display area without needlessly affecting the size of the text being read. More than one image for an example problem? Then pop different images into the image area without pushing the text further away from the image being viewed.
This rendering approach is accomplished first and foremost through a content encoding scheme that allows production software to discern the difference between pure narrative, descriptive text, and referenced images.
Once the encoding features are in place, technologies can take over to tune the presentation (stage content incrementally, isolate scaling requests, provide search services, bookmarking, etc….) by using features available on all modern phone browsers.
This re-packaging is appropriate only for titles that focus on developing problem-solving skills that rely on figures and illustrations to convey topic concepts. Text-heavy titles such as novels are still best served by the re-flowing implementations.
But when it comes to the best way to present review materials for science, math, and engineering subjects, it is best to understand that today’s modern phones should not be considered as a mere a digital representation of a book ---- and that is a good thing.