Wednesday, December 17, 2008

21st Century Technology Tools, 2nd Edition

I have finally completed a revised edition of my book of technology tutorials for teachers. This new edition includes updated screenshots for Delicious, Ning and Google Docs. I have also added tutorials for Google Reader, Twitter and Flickr. I published the book using lulu.com, you can purchase a copy for $9.94 or download the PDF for free.

I am thrilled that my school has purchased copies of the book for the entire faculty and staff. It is wonderful to work in a place that is so supportive of my efforts to help teachers to start using Web 2.0 tools.

15 comments:

Christine Archer said...

Thanks for providing the free pdf.

Anonymous said...

Excellent! Congrats. Change students to learners, teachers to instructions, and class to course and you'll have yourself a nice corporate learning market.

Liz B Davis said...

Christine, you are welcome.

Janet - I've thought about that. I'd also have to tweak some of the content since it is pretty teacher focused. If I did that, I would definitely charge for the PDF!

Sharon said...

Congratulations - How do you find the time. Nice job and great to offer teachers a pdf download.

Clif Mims said...

Congratulations, Liz. I'm looking forward to reading through this and sharing it with the teachers in my classes in the Spring.

Betty Online said...

I'm here following a recommendation from Dave Truss. What a great intro to you he gave on his pair-a-dimes blog. I'm looking forward to reading your book and perhaps using it in the upcoming Learning and Teaching with Technology graduate diploma program out of Simon Fraser University. Thanks for your work.

Ruth said...

Thanks so much for the free pdf. Here in Saudi Arabia we can't order things online, they won't send them here. I had to have my own book sent to Australia and I am still waiting for it to arrive after my son sent it on. It's very frustrating. In the college where I work we have a lot of technophobic teachers so this is useful!

Robin said...

The timing is terrific - I can take time to go through it over the break. Thanks for so generously providing a PDF. When funding is restored I'll purchase copies for our library.

Brent R Jones said...

Liz have you had a look at www.zoho.com. It seems better than Google docs in some ways.

Brent (Zomby on Plurk)

Liz B Davis said...

Brent - In what ways do you think Zoho is better than Google Docs? I haven't really explored it

Anonymous said...

Liz
Thanks for the free pdf. I have already used it and want to share it with another teacher I know in my school. It's really useful.

Nancy Caramanico said...

This is fabulous, Liz. Great visuals. Thanks for sharing the pdf.

Karen Janowski said...

Congratulations on the second edition - wonderful achievement and we all benefit from your knowledge.
Do you think your previous employer would have purchased the book for all the teachers there?

Anonymous said...

First ... thanks for providing the pdf ... however I'm somewhat surprised that one would even consider "hard copy" for resources such as web 2.0 tools. This field is changing much to rapidly. Even assuming that 75% of the resources about which you write are the best tools to use ... in 12 months time, almost every tool will have software updates that change the user interface. For your next effort I strongly recommend you create content which is easily editable, and can be re-published with minimal effort and cost. This also insures that your intellectual property which folks will be accessing represents current technology. I personally like a combination of Powerpoint authoring tools which convert to Flash. This allows me to take screen shots of my desired content ... import to Powerpoint where I annotate and animate, but allows for minor or major changes whenever that need arises. While I might not be the best designer, you can see a recent example of my idea via my blog which shows how Google indexes content (metadata tutorial). Here is the link: http://econtent.typepad.com/econtent/2008/12/metadata-test-in-progress.html. Keep up the good work ... Rich Hoeg (a PEA grad from way back who now manages web 2.0 applications for a large Fortune 100 company)

Liz B Davis said...

Mark, Nancy and Karen - Thanks. I'm glad you are finding it helpful.

Karen - I'm not sure if my old school could have afforded to invest in so many copies of the book.

Northstar Nerd - I agree there is something ironic about trying to capture Web 2.0 applications on paper. I also create screencasts to help people learn these new tools.

In the world of education, where many teachers are still most comfortable learning in 20th century ways, a printed set of instructions can be a good bridge from old to new. It is difficult to keep it updated, which is why I offer the PDF for free. I don't really make any money on the printed edition, and through lulu it doesn't cost me any money to offer it.

I actually created the book as slides using Google Docs Presentations, so it isn't too hard to update. I just needed to take some new screenshots. I tried to open your PowerPoint file, but couldn't open it on my Mac.