-j,

Been doing a lot of research on epub stuff since you showed me that app. I’ve noticed that sometimes the ‘published’ books from CBB are not seen as ‘valid’ by other readers (than iBooks). Still investigating reasons for that. It has something to do with the configuration files or file structure within the ‘.epub’ package, I’m guessing.

Also, things like video used in CBB book won’t be visible on many other readers, since video is not a ‘core media type’ in the current epub spec [2.x] or the proposed one [3.0]. At least mp4 audio has been added to the proposal as well as embedded fonts [so you won’t be stuck with the ‘iBooks’ native font].

FYI: check out the OSX Lion info here: http://www.macosxautomation.com/lion/epub/index.html [create epub files from clipboard content, selected text, etc]. That looks pretty cool.

–

Delivering courses via epub could be difficult for a while due to lack of standardization and limited media type support. You could maybe target one device and screen size at this point. EPUB is also designed for ‘text flow’, which is great for letting the device reader reposition content as needed based on its display, but terrible if you need to control layout for any reason. That seems to be why many magazine publishers are writing their own apps (NY Times uses Adobe Air, e.g.) so layout and bling are more controlled and content can be auto-updated.

Cheers,
-a

Even with these limitations, I still feel that for teacher self-authoring of iBooks compatible “eBooks” directly on the iPad, CBB is still an effective and affordable tool. I do hope that we see improvement in this product and also an evolution of EPUB format that is more standardized across devices so that teachers can reach all learners with the content they develop.

I appreciate your comments about the choices you are making about the literature review in your dissertation. If nothing else, it is nice to see people making intentional choices about how they approach the task.

But I do need to clarify that nowhere in my that article (unless I am misremembering) did we say that a dissertation literature review should be “totally exhaustive.” We did use the word “thorough” and it is a word that needs clarification. We have already made some of these points here in our rejoinder to Maxwell’s piece:
https://www.aera.net/uploadedFiles/Publications/Journals/Educational_Researcher/3509/10324-06_Boote_p32-35.pdf
My basic point, one that I still stand by, is that someone earning a doctorate ought to know the literature in their field. But that only begs more questions.

A silly interpretation of this would be to say a doctoral candidate ought to have read every single thing every published on the topic. Worse would be expecting that they not only read it all but chose to include it all in the dissertation. That would certainly make for boring reading. And I suspect that it was this idea that Maxwell was reacting to in his reply. Most of us who have done this for a while have read too many endless dry summaries of the literature.

So if “thorough” is not the same thing as “exhaustive,” then what is it? If you go back to the work Harris Cooper was doing on literature reviews in the ’80s you might find his very helpful taxonomy of literature review. You can find a short explanation of it here:
Cooper, H. M. (2003). Editorial. Psychological Bulletin, 123(1), 3-9. [republished from the earlier work]
He suggests at least four ways that we can be thorough. Exhaustive is only one choice.

But we make that choice depending on the state of the literature we are reviewing and what we are doing with that literature — the point we are trying make based on our reading of the literature we are reviewing. This is what Cooper called the ‘goal’ of the review. I am inclined to think that all of the other choices on Cooper’s taxonomy follow from those choices of coverage and goal.

But I do hear you when you remind us that many students in professional doctoral programs have to make intelligent choices about how they spend their time. You need to learn the literature on your topic but you need to do so efficiently. The most important strategy is to focus your initial search on high-quality, published literature reviews. Journals like Review of Educational Research and Review of Research in Education specialize in such synthetic reviews, but many other journals will publish literature review articles. If someone else has already reviewed the field, why should you replicate the work? Why not start where they left off? Or at least use their hard work to start your review.

In short, Maxwell left us with a false dichotomy and I worry that it is a seductive dichotomy. Can’t we both help the reader to understand the state of the literature and how the choices we made help us to contribute to the literature?

Good luck with the rest of your program.