Author: Dr David Robinson
Published: December 2012
Pages: 85
Interactives: Over 200 video resources, 2 multipage interactive panoramas, 10 Keynote interactives, 22 embedded multiple choice quizzes
Store description:
The islands of the Galápagos archipelago, with their unique flora and fauna, are of enormous scientific interest. Being very fragile it is important to plan a visit with care. This book from the Open University will take you there virtually, so that you can explore the wildlife of the islands as an introduction to their scientific and historical importance. The book is not a conventional prose text, but instead is a "video concept book", using a rich mix of video resources and questions to help the visitor to see this unique site through the eyes of an evolutionary biologist.
You will see how the animals and plants are adapted to the unusual habitats of the islands, be able to test yourself on what you are learning, and enjoy the beauty of this very special place.
To accompany you on your virtual journey there will be a number of scientists who have worked on the islands. Through video interviews they will give you a scientific perspective on the formation of the islands, their colonisation and the development of present day habitats. The islands are a living laboratory for the study of evolution and natural selection. However, they are also a prime example of fragile ecosystems that can so easily suffer permanent damage.
Our aims:
To take existing resources from an Open University level one basic science course and repurpose it in the form of a highly visual, video rich, 'glossy' interactive ebook. The source material was taken from an interactive DVD on flora and fauna of the Galápagos, and is almost entirely based around videos. The book was designed to use no custom HTML5 widgets but still to make a highly interactive and engaging book. Key features investigated include:
1) Strong design and support images:
With a predominance of video resources over text, the book had to be designed to be graphically strong. The Galápagos is a perfect subject matter for this, with many unique and interesting creatures and scenery to use. Cut-outs of the creatures are used periodically through the book, which break-out of the in-page rectangles to add interest and dimension to the pages. Additionally, 'near' full page photos are used as background to give visual impact.
2) Linked and embedded videos:
Video resources were incorporated directly into pages either as embedded videos, which play in page (see screenshot in 1) above), or as thumbnails which when tapped play the videos 'full screen' (see screenshot directly above). The latter being used where there was more than one video on a page, and/or other elements such as a quiz on the page too.
3) Page spanning panoramas with hidden hotspots:
A visually effective trick was employed in the Galápagos by creating 2 panoramas which seamlessly span across multiple pages. The thumbnails of the five pages which made up one of these can be seen in the chapter 'contents' page screenshot above and an individual page from the panorama is above (note the 2 creatures - an iguana and a bird - bottom middle). Additionally, invisible hotspots were created over the various creatures that appear on the pages so that when the user taps on one of these a relevant movie is opened and played full screen (the hotspots being movies placed over the creatures. These movies were set to play full screen only, and were set to have 0% opacity). The end result is not dissimilar to the QuickTime VR movies that were resources on the original course DVD. .
4) Effective in-page interactives using Apple's Keynote:
One of our aims was to minimise the use of custom widgets and make use of the standard feature set provided by Apple. One of the standard widgets in iBooks Author is for embedding Keynote presentations into book pages. This is in fact a very powerful tool as it can allow quite complex interactives to be created simply and with no programming knowledge. Additionally this has the advantage over the custom HTML5 widgets that they will actually play within the page (as well as full screen).
The above images shows an example where we used an embedded Keynote presentation to good effect. In this example the user is presented with an image with a number of hotspots which when tapped play a video and then when the user taps the screen again returns them to the original image. The top image above shows a screenshot of the presentation in Keynote. The first slide of the presentation is the image map and each subsequent presentation slides are for the movies seen when a hot spot is tapped. The Keynote is set to navigate via links, and the hotspots on the first slide are set to have links to jump to the Keynote slide containing the relevant movie. Each slide containing a movie has a link to jump Keynote back to the first slide. The Keynote is set to play within the page as can be seen in the bottom two screenshots above.
5) Reflective learning:
A key feature of the original DVD material was to get the student to learn about evolution and adaptation on the Galápagos through a series of questions and to assist the student in answering the questions they were provided with a number of video resources to watch first. This format for learning has been reproduced in the Galápagos book through the use Apple's in-page survey widget together with embedded videos. The question widget contains either a single or many multiple choice questions. The questions are also sometimes illustrated with associated images (as in the above screenshot - left). The survey widget allows the user to check their answers to see how much they have understood. The supporting video resources are presented as thumbnails in the book pages which when tapped play back at full screen.
There was one exception to this approach as shown in the above screenshot (right). In this example we demonstrated the use of a Keynote presentation to navigate the video resources (which were numerous for this particular question) combined with the use of the Survey widget. This approach did have the additional advantage of the Keynote (and hence the videos) playing in-page, so that the user could see and listen to the videos at the same time as reading the question being asked.