Description
Producing eBooks is a complex task. Although they follow the well know book metaphor, Adobe Acrobat (1) eBooks may also include audiovisual media, hyperlinking structures, other interactive content and information layers. The process of production goes through an iterative cycle, where content authors team with designers, programmers, media producers and information architects. Its then crucial to optimize this process using software tools to help structuring the content, faciliting groupworking and metadata annotation. In this paper, we propose a new tool aiming the easy description of the relationships amongst different pieces of content and the fast prototyping of the navigation schema of the eBook. This tool intends to provide an usability tested and friendly rich interface application. We expect to provide drag-&-drop hierarchy folders and contextual help in a cross-platform setting based in the Macromedia Flex (2) software. Content should be separated from style, as we expect authors not to care on the graphic design issues. The content structure follows IMS Content Packaging (3) standard and metadata annotation of each type of content use IMS Learning Resource Metadata (4). Contents are grouped in folders equivalent to CISCO Reusable Learning Objects (5), in order to better express the instructional design of the eBooks. We expect that these structures contents can be exported in three different ways: a rapid prototyping HTML view of the navigation, a SCORM learning object for use in Learning Management Systems like Moodle (6) and an editable Acrobat PDF-X (7) version for final production. Groupwork facilities, version and access control, storage and reuse shall be controlled using the Exlibris Digitool (8) digital library, providing a way for central management with distributed access. This tool is in beta stage of development and will soon be tested with real authors. The paper will describe the tool and present the first usability results.
Included in
ebooks publication: the technology, the contents, the how to do; a challenge to the competences share and team work.
Producing eBooks is a complex task. Although they follow the well know book metaphor, Adobe Acrobat (1) eBooks may also include audiovisual media, hyperlinking structures, other interactive content and information layers. The process of production goes through an iterative cycle, where content authors team with designers, programmers, media producers and information architects. Its then crucial to optimize this process using software tools to help structuring the content, faciliting groupworking and metadata annotation. In this paper, we propose a new tool aiming the easy description of the relationships amongst different pieces of content and the fast prototyping of the navigation schema of the eBook. This tool intends to provide an usability tested and friendly rich interface application. We expect to provide drag-&-drop hierarchy folders and contextual help in a cross-platform setting based in the Macromedia Flex (2) software. Content should be separated from style, as we expect authors not to care on the graphic design issues. The content structure follows IMS Content Packaging (3) standard and metadata annotation of each type of content use IMS Learning Resource Metadata (4). Contents are grouped in folders equivalent to CISCO Reusable Learning Objects (5), in order to better express the instructional design of the eBooks. We expect that these structures contents can be exported in three different ways: a rapid prototyping HTML view of the navigation, a SCORM learning object for use in Learning Management Systems like Moodle (6) and an editable Acrobat PDF-X (7) version for final production. Groupwork facilities, version and access control, storage and reuse shall be controlled using the Exlibris Digitool (8) digital library, providing a way for central management with distributed access. This tool is in beta stage of development and will soon be tested with real authors. The paper will describe the tool and present the first usability results.