A gratuitous photo that has nothing to do with the post, but one I took & like.

Yeah, I’ve fallen off the wagon. back on now. Thanks, Tannis. Ironically, I am on holiday next week so just when I get back on….

• Meetings with Campus Manitoba and Saskatchewan Ministry of Advanced Ed talking open textbooks & other open education initiatives.
• Open Textbook Summit. Finalized presentation proposals with Amanda and Lauri. Very happy with the response to the call & such a great bunch of people coming to Vancouver at the end of May to share what they know about open textbooks.
• Prepping Pressbooks presentation for CCCOER webinar April 8th on publishing tools.
• Budget meeting. That time of the year.
• Site visit for our co-op student with her program. Can’t rave enough about the work that she is doing for us. Nice to have someone with some programming bg helping out Brad on Pressbooks development.
• Wrapped up PDF project with FunnyMonkey to add an open source PDF output egine (mPDF) to Pressbooks. Watch for that option coming to PressBooks Textbook in the coming weeks. Brad is just doing some finishing work on our end and then it gets released.
• Signed development contract with Pressbooks to create an ODT output for Pressbooks. This will mean that you will be able to choose an output from Pressbooks that is Word compatible (our goal to make adaptation by faculty just that much easier by making a format that they may feel more comfortable working in).
• Project update meeting with the Ministry. I have to say, when I took on this new (temporary) senior role in the fall, the thought of these meetings caused me anxiety. I had no idea what they would be like, or who I would be dealing with, despite Mary’s reassurances. I didn’t sleep the night before my first one. What has actually happened is that something I dreaded so much ahs turned into one of my most enjoyable meetings. I feel very fortunate that we have such wonderful support at the Ministry and are working with a crew of very supportive people. I sleep soundly the nights before our meetings now.
• Prepping another offering of EdTechOpen workshop with Commonwealth of Learning & Ministry of Education April 17-22.
• We released 2 new books. Our Criminology book developed by JIBC and SFU, and a very interesting and unique open textbook on First Nations economics that came to us from the Tulo Center.
• Happy & proud of the recognition the entire open textbook team got this week.
• Faculty Fellows meeting with Beck Pitt from OER Research Hub to discuss preliminary findings of our faculty research project on open textbooks and open education. Some excellent findings already that will help inform our future direction for the open textbook project, as well as help others.
• Bit of work on a draft budget for OpenEd 2015 (proposals now open).
• Invited by Colin to attend a faculty development workshop at TRU in May. Submitted workshop abstract for the session I am doing on OER.
• Booked travel to Open Education Global conference in Banff next month. Looking forward to connecting with many open educators I have yet to meet IRL.
• What would the BC Open Textbook project look like in 5 years? I’m writing this now.
• Reading: How Much Do College Students Actually Pay For Textbooks? and postscript by Phil Hill. Also The Remix Hypothesis by David Wiley. David’s post has really resonated and one I hope that gets further exploration by researchers. The case study I often talk about in presentations  (and one that I suspect helped David formulate the remix hypothesis) is the  Houston Community College example of Carol Layman  where remix appears to have been a contributing factor in improving student outcomes.
• Picked up a couple tickets to the Women’s World Cup in Vancouver in June. Really looking forward to taking my son to the games. We’ve been to a few internationals (not many roll through our neck of the woods) with a hilight being Canada vs. Mexico at the 2013 Gold Cup in Seattle. Such an awesome memory for both of us.