Monday, January 23: Overview of an eTextbook Ecosystem

What are the morphological parts of the Ecosystem?
What are the things that we need to consider? 

* Content: Text, images, audio, video, equations, tables
  * Authoring tools for creating and integrating those content materials
  * Formats/conventions: PDF, iPad, Kindle; SCORM; DITA, DocBook, HTML5,
    IEEE Learning Object Metadata
* Delivering content: what device?
  * PC, mobile smart phone, iPhone, iPad, Kindle
* Storing collections of books:
     Connexions (cnx.org), LeMill (lemill.net)
  * Licensing: Proprietary, creative commons, open source
  * Who has rights to use, contribute, modify?
  * How are variants organized and handled?
  * Who authorizes and endorses?
  * How is a large "library" of material organized?
* Meaningful student interaction
  * What this means is still vague. And the support is sketchy and evolving
  * But it is what qualitatively distinguishes eTextbooks from paper books
  * HTML5?
* "Back end" class data tracking
  * Khan Academy, CMS like Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai
* Question banks: authoring, storing, delivering; question types
  * IMS QTI, Moodle
* Assessment mechanisms: automated if possible
  * Online systems for learning programming is an example
* Intelligent tutoring
* Structuring the eTextbook
  * A bunch of modules? How does it relate to course assignments and grading?
* [Pedagogical] How to evaluate the ecosystem

Presentation: Khan Academy (from a user's point of view)
http://khanacademy.org
* Three parts
  * Videos
  * Exercises
  * "Back end"