Since we've conducted most of our updates verbally with Dr. Blakesley, we've been remiss about updating them on the blog. So, here's our mega update.

Jillian and Abby created templates for the iBooks Author version of The Available Means early in November. We worked from one of the existing templates and adapted it to the needs of the text. We formatted each chapter page template with a horizontal image that runs across the top of the page. We plan to use different sections from the image from the book's cover along the top of each chapter page.

Our team has made some solid progress. We've collected assets to enhance components of the text. The authors of our text have also sent us color versions of the images to use in our iBook.

Reading through Girard's review had me categorizing and noting things I should be aware of moving forward in my work with iBooks Author. Sadly, I find that I'll be limited in more ways than I expected to be... I'm tempted to administer a System Usability Scale (SUS) to evaluate iBooks Author and see how well it performs. Either that, or I've been spending too much time working on usability studies.

Notes to self:

Bessette sets up and asks the same questions we've been attempting to answer throughout our seminar. When her work is published, she, "[wants] to hold a book and see [her] name there. But it's all just cultural bias. How do we change something that is so embedded in our culture's DNA?"

On Friday, my students and I went to Cooper Library. I asked them to find 2 books on their research topic from the library to help them learn to navigate the database and call numbers. Two of my students found e-books on their topic. One was excited--partially because navigating call numbers and the first floor of Cooper overwhelmed him--that he could read it on his laptop. Another student found an e-book available through Cooper but still used InterLibrary Loan to request a hard copy of it. Why this discrepancy?