Yes, you can... Publish your own ebooks!

If you are anything like me, you get VERY frustrated on behalf of your students with the cost of textbooks and other materials. A lot of institutions of higher education around the country - especially public institutions, which are heavily supported by taxpayer dollars - are adopting low-cost initiatives. In 2011, Washington launched its Open Course Library project, aiming to keep the cost of course materials to the student to $30 or less. The Washington state legislature funded the project, knowing that in the long term the taxpayers would be saving money. Along with many other institutions, the Maricopa Community Colleges has launched its own low-cost initiative, Maricopa Millions, where a "low-cost" course is defined as one which will cost the student $40 or less in total for course materials.

There are two big ways in which you can help students...

Gather existing Open resources that have been shared by others and would be appropriate for learning in your courses, and start using them! The list of resources below may help you get started:

• https://opensource.com/education/13/11/teach-better-prepare-students
• http://teachingopensource.org/
• https://oli.cmu.edu
• https://home.edweb.net/concrete-ways-use-oer-classroom/
• http://www.edutopia.org/open-educational-resources-guide
• http://www.openwa.org/
• http://opencourselibrary.org/
• https://maricopamillions.wordpress.com/maricopa-millions-website/
• http://opencontent.org
• http://openstaxcollege.org
  
• http://saylor.org
• http://merlot.org

Creating your own materials isn't as difficult as you may think - there are so many easy-to-use web tools and mobile apps out there to help you create images, videos, slideshows, infographics, electronic posters, ebooks, etc., that pretty much anyone can create great content!

WHICH BRINGS US TO THE POINT OF TODAY'S TEACHING TIP - check out these linked resources, and you'll discover how easy it is to create a web-accessible ebook for your students using http://atavist.com! To get started, and/or to answer just about any Atavist-related question you might have, go to http://help.atavist.com/

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"Atavist was founded by Evan (a writer), Nick (an editor), and Jeff (a programmer) back in 2011, when conventional wisdom held that “the end of the attention span” was upon us and that “the death of longform” was imminent. We believed instead that the web could be a thriving home for deeper stories, beautiful design, and innovative publications. So we built a software platform to make it all possible, and a magazine to show how it’s done.

Atavist is now home for tens of thousands of storytellers, from giant companies to small nonprofits, from national magazines to college students, from branded content mavens to hard-bitten journalists. Our groundbreaking flagship publication, The Atavist Magazine, is an eight-time finalist for the National Magazine Awards and the first digital-only magazine to win for feature writing."
-Atavist: Our Story and Who We Are

Cover for one of the books for Macroeconomic Principles.

I discovered Atavist while I was on sabbatical in 2015-2016, searching for a "device-agnostic" ebook authoring tool (i.e., a tool that would create an ebook that students could use regardless of the device that they were using, as long as they had an internet connection). Atavist best suited my needs for several reasons:

• Atavist is FREE (there are paid plans if you are want higher-end development tools, or if you are monetizing your books)
• Atavist allows you to create a web-based ebook that can be accessed by any device that has an internet connection (unlike my iBooks, which can only be accessed via Apple devices). The books are also mobile-friendly, so that students can easily use them on their phones or tablets. You can browse my books (see sample cover above) at https://mjmfoodie.atavist.com
• As you do look at the books that I was able to put together, note that Atavist automatically creates a clickable table of contents that your students will be able to use, and that I was also able to include standard textbook features like a glossary of terms in the back of each book.
• Atavist supports a fairly robust array of media and interactives within your creation, including slideshows, embedded YouTube videos, Twitter feeds, images, HTML code, etc., allowing you to give your students a rich, interactive experience as they use your book.

Give Atavist a try - you'll be surprised how easily you become a self-published author. And if you need any assistance, your friendly neighborhood CTLA is (as always) happy to help!

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