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There’s nothing like a little sun, both physical and metaphorical, to make your day.

So after a brilliant long weekend, it’s nice to step out of the proverbial shadows with today’s coverage in the Toronto Star. Here’s an extract or three from Naomi Carniol’s piece:

Unlike a traditional eBook, which digitizes an entire paper book, the Liquid Textbook allows for chunking – picking chapters of books written by different authors and bringing those chapters together in a digital anthology, along with other multimedia content, that suits an instructor’s course.

Nice to see the recognition of how we help publishers:

Liquid Textbooks respect “the place of the publisher in developing content and also offer something beyond what the printed book offered to its end users,” says David Stover, president of Oxford University Press Canada. “We really feel it represents an alternative revenue channel.”

And the benefits to educators and students are made similarly clear:

That’s exactly what Amanda Goldrick-Jones experienced when she used a Liquid Textbook to teach business writing at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.

“Many of the students’ [online] comments were very insightful and so we would bring the comments into class discussion and students would elaborate on them, agree, disagree,” said Goldrick-Jones. “That added more depth and a bit more richness to class discussion.”

Interestingly, this has spawned some interesting summaries and suggestions on Twitter this morning:

michaelim e-Textbook mashup benefits publishers, instructors & students alike

@gflavive Opportunities for #documentary filmmakers? e-Textbook multimedia mashup

temc Thanks to Symtext , studying is about to get a whole lot more interesting

We’d love to hear other thoughts and suggestions. Certainly, if you’d like to build a Liquid Textbook or use Symtext as a means to reach educators with your content, we’d love to hear from you!

Today is a big day for us. We have opened our doors to educators — both academic and corporate — to get free accounts on Symtext. We think it’s time to share what we do with a larger audience, letting people know that Symtext makes it easy for educators to teach the ideal course by providing their learners with exactly the right mix of digital learning materials. Mixing textbook chapters, podcasts, presentations, videos and cases together with your own course materials, you can design customized course material that is more topical, compelling and valuable than the traditional one-size-fits-all print and e-textbook model.

Let me take a moment to explain how it works and what to expect. Fill out our form and you’ll receive a welcome email with some instructions and Kathleen’s brief how-to video, which we highly recommend that you watch. We’ll follow up on this with an email containing your ID and PW.

Login and you’ll find yourself in the Liquid Textbook Builder, the place where educators construct course materials for students by assembling and organizing granular content from multiple publishers. There are a few things to note!
* you are dealing with a beta version of the product. While thousands of students have used Liquid Textbooks, we have been doing a lot of the setup for the educators. We are more than willing to help you set up a Liquid Textbook, too! So if you get lost, confused, or like the idea but want us to do the work, simply email us at symtextsupport@symtext.com. (Yes, real people check this account!)
* not all of our content is accessible via a Free Account. The intention behind the Free Accounts is to give you a sense for how to construct a Liquid Textbook and the experience you and your students will have if you decide to publish a Liquid Textbook for one or more of your courses. So don’t worry if you don’t find relevant content for your courses — we can get it for you.
* to get a better sense for things, send us one or more course outlines and we’ll work to a) secure the necessary permissions and b) make sure your Liquid Textbook(s) reflects exactly what you’re looking for.
* To make a Liquid Textbook live for a course, you don’t have to do anything, we will. We’ll work with your Institution’s IT Department if you want your Liquid Textbook accessible via your Learning Management System. We’ll handle all the billing and access questions and processes.

By educator, who do we mean? Well, professors and instructors, obviously. But personnel involved with Learning Design and Development, Teaching and Learning should get in touch, as should Program Directors and Library staff. We want to make it clear that the Symtext Liquid Textbook platform addresses a wide range of teaching and learning materials concerns, from sourcing, assembling, publishing and delivering to time, budget and quality issues.

So, please, get in touch with us and get started! And remember that we’re here to help you every step of the way.