The changing nature of books

One major development is the growing thoughts on the development of eBooks as part of the course structure with the hope that we will get all courses to develop eBooks for the beginning of the course in September 2015 and that these will be used substantially as parts of the course from that time.

Affordances of the eBook.

We have been thinking in the linked Erasmus project (www.mttep.eu) of the affordance of eBooks and have now developed a model which places these into four key groups.

A. The artefacts that can be included

Alongside print and image the eBook can include video, audio, moving graphic, slideshows, animations etc… this gives the creator of the book much more scope for transmitting information, exploring ideas, demonstrating and offering learning in a variety of ways. 

Once simple example might be in Maths where an animation can show the deconstruction method of subtraction as a small animated movie so the words of the teacher alongside the actions that would be demonstrated can be included into the book. This can then be replayed as often as needed by the learner.

B Way in which the artefacts can be organised

The layout of pBooks is determined by a number of factors including print layout, text option, cost, colour, size - none of these apply to the eBook and so text can be enlarged, changed, designed and moved in a complex manner.

And all of these can be updated and corrected very quickly and simply. Alongside side this is the interactivity of user feedback and co-development for improvement.

C Interactivity

A number of companies are developing interactive widgets for eBooks (Bookry, Bookwidgits and Learningapp are three that we are working with) this include timelines, quizzes, overlays, drag and drop, annotate, feedback, maps, reveal etc…

D Capturing Data

The eBook can capture data and then send this to the teacher - this has potential benefits around marking, assessment and feedback and as books develop the use of data analytics could be used to direct learning - in the way that the Khan Academy has been using and the work of Eric Mazur and others.

We are developing eBooks at this time for the teaching of the primary science course (see above) and the Secondary History course.