[LINK] ICT Sustainability Course Notes and e-Publishing Formats for Education

[Tom Worthington]

A revised version of my notes for a postgraduate course on "ICT 
Sustainability" are available at: http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/

I would welcome corrections and comments.

THE FORMATS

Previously I published the notes as PDF, Kindle and Apple iPad e-Books, 
as well as paperback, large print and hardback books: 
http://www.tomw.net.au/green/

But these were not exactly best sellers, as the enrolled students get a 
free (and more up to date) copy via the Learning Management System (as a 
Moodle Book or IMS Content Package). Also anyone could read the free web 
version of the material. The published versions were an experiment in 
multi-format publishing from a HTML source.

Also producing a paper "book" helped to convince my academic colleagues 
the subject matter was worthy of serious study. They may not understand 
the technical content, but are impressed by a table of contents, 
references and a bibliography. Even so, keep in mind the book is not 
intended as a product of original research and not even a conventional 
textbook, just a set of notes to accompany a course.

For the new version, the paperback edition should be sufficient for 
giving the content the gravitas of a book, while the web version makes 
the material widely available. So those are the formats I have started with.

Previously I produced multiple PDF files: one for each paper edition of 
the book and one for electronic version. By tradition, paper books start 
their page numbers anew with the first page of the first chapter. This 
is confusing for an electronic version, where the distinction between 
front matter and main content is less apparent. After struggling with 
this once, I decided it was time to end this nonsense, so the new book 
numbers pages consecutively from the title page. So as not to offend 
readers of the paper version too much, I suppress the page numbers 
before the first chapter (the first page number visible, on the first 
page of the first chapter is "7"). I can then use the same PDF file for 
print and electronic versions.

The PDF was produced using a LibreOffice master document, with the XHTML 
chapter files from the Moodle e-Book as sub documents. There is no need 
to covert the HTML as LibreOffice does this on the fly. I would have 
preferred to use LaTex, but found its HTML conversion too limited and 
the available WYSIWYG tools frustrating.

To produce the Amazon Kindle and EPUB (as used by Apple iPad) eBook 
versions, I need to convert the HTML into different versions. While not 
difficult, it would be useful if there was one system which could 
produce all the versions at once.

THE CONTENT

The notes are for a course offered by the Australian National University 
(COMP7310), Australian Computer Society (GTS), and Open Universities 
Australia (ACS25). There is also a version adapted for North America by 
Athabasca University, Canada (COMP635).

The notes have been updated from "Green Technology Strategies: Using 
computers and telecommunications to reduce carbon emissions" 
(Worthington, 2009). Changes include:

1. Skills descriptions: Two SFIA sustainability skills have (SUST: 
Sustainability strategy and SUAS: Sustainability assessment) replaced 
the six ICT skills specified previously.

2. Structure: The course has been divided into two sections, each 
covering one of the two skills.

3. Assignment Titles: The descriptions of the two assignments have been 
changed to match the two skills.

4. Reference Changes: The number of links to external sources and also 
internal links (particularly to the Glossary) has been reduced, to avoid 
confusing the reader. The list of sources cited has been consolidated 
into one section at the back and Harvard style references used.

5. Title: ICT Sustainability has replaced Green ICT in the title, to 
match the skills descriptions used.

BACKGROUND

For background on where the course came from and how it was developed, 
see my blog posts on "e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies": 
http://blog.tomw.net.au/search/label/Green%20Course%20Design


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards 
Legislation

Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra