The document outlines a workshop by Becky Peltz at Seattle University focused on using GitBook and similar tools for online instruction and content sharing. It describes the advantages of publishing FAQs and provides a detailed 11-step process for setting up a GitBook FAQ using GitHub and GitBook tools. The aim is to help online instructors create and publish reference materials that enhance student learning.

1. Gitbook FAQ’s
Sharing Technology
Becky Peltz
Seattle University
rpeltz@seattleu.edu
Online Learning Consortium
Acceleration Workshop
November 2018

2. My Bio Instructor at Seattle University
School of New and Continuing Studies
Web Application Technology Studies
MBA and 30+ years programming in Seattle

3. Objectives for
Workshop
Publish some content to the web
Share how “Guide on the Side” needs a variety of tools
to engage students and provide information so that
they can work on their own
Compare a book format to an FAQ and see how they
are alike
Understand what material belongs in a FAQ and what
doesn’t
Become familiar with tools to write locally and publish
online
Work through the process that I am using to publish
FAQ’s online using Gitbook Static Site Generator

4. Sample Gitbooks
See my medium blog on this topic
Let’s look at some other final products
Web Application Technology Studies FAQ
JavaScript Applications with Vue.js Shawn Rider

5. Gitbook in the Cloud
legacy.gitbook.com
www.gitbook.com
Why am I using my own process?

6. Audience
How many are online instructors? What subjects?
How many have written a book? Want to write a book?
How many have published a book? In print? On the
web?
How many are instructors are looking for a way to
share information on the web as you would in an FAQ?
Any Web Developers?
How many have set up the environment - Github
account, Gitbook Editor, VS Code Environment?

7. My Problem I want to have a reference point that I can use to share
information that I know many online students will
want to see.

8. Open Source
Yay!

9. Git, Github, and
Gitbook
Git is a program that helps maintain a versioned file
repository. It can “push” to local or remote
repositories
Github.com is a cloud based location that acts as s
remote repository for storing personal files for free. It
provides an easy and free method for publishing to a
static file server: github.io
● Is it worth learning?
● Who uses it?
● Who owns it?
legacy.Gitbook.com is cloud based tool for writing
books
Gitbook toolchain is a set of tools for creating
gitbooks on your own

10. Prepare your Local
Environment Node: a JavaScript runner
NPM: comes with Node a JavaScript package manager
Git: a program to help with versioning text
Github: a repository to store markdown and host HTML
Gitbook Editor: word processor that produces markdown
Gitbook CLI: a command line interface to create html
from markdown and translate plugins
Visual Studio Code: stay organized
Gulp: a JavaScript task runner

11. Gitbook
Publishable
Template
This template contains code describes code and
scripts to be used in building a Gitbook FAQ locally.
Template Code
package.json
● Code dependencies
● Scripts
● Author description
● Links to repo that it is in
● Install JavaScript libraries with npm install
Book.json
● Plugins for gitbook
● Install plugins with gitbook install

12. The Process in
11 Steps 1. Create a new repo on Github to hold Gitbook FAQ
2. Clone or download my publish template repository
to local drive
3. Push template code to new Github repo then
HTTPS clone to local drive
4. Open Gitbook folder in Gitbook editor
5. Open Gitbook folder in VS Code
6. Make adjustments to make the template yours in
VS Code
7. Create content in Gitbook
8. Push to Github (will sync locally automatically)
9. Gulp to build html
10. Push to github
11. Publish to GH Pages

13. Time to brainstorm
how to use this
Subject matter books
FAQ’s
Students can use it to create cheat sheets
Anything else?