William Melton created an iBook as an educational resource on examining the cardiovascular system for medical students at Manchester Medical School. The iBook contained basic explanatory text content drawn from papers and textbooks, as well as interactive content like a glossary, videos created using iMovie, and widgets from external websites. Creating the interactive content like clinical photos and designing the cover took the most time and effort. The iBook had to be reviewed by two consultants before it could be used at the medical school. In summary, educational iBooks can be made with free tools and require little experience, though distribution and quality control should be considered.

1. William Melton
Creation of an iBook as
an educational
resource

2. Topics
❖ Background
❖ Basic content
❖ Interactive content
❖ Things to think about
❖ Setbacks
❖ Summary

3. Background
❖ 4 week ‘Personal Excellence Pathway’ at the
Manchester Medical School.
❖ Lack of prior teaching on examination of the
cardiovascular system.
❖ Decided to create an iBook to rectify the issue.

4. Basic Content
❖ Majority of the content was explanation using text.
❖ Created using scientific papers, textbooks and common
knowledge.
❖ Shadowed consultant cardiologists in the hospital to
ascertain common practice and explore some of the
more intricate parts of the examination.
❖ Most however was drawn from prior knowledge picked
up during the first few years of education.

5. Interactive Content
❖ iBooks Author
❖ FREE
❖ Intuitive and easy to use
❖ Numerous styles to fit any kind
of book.
❖ Easy to import other content
including movies and ‘widgets’.
❖ Only used to create iBooks, no
other format supported.

6. Interactive Content
❖ Glossary
❖ Useful way of including fine details which are not included in the
main content of the book.
❖ Can include pictures and links to further explain and describe what is
found in the main content.
❖ Links in the text in the glossary can provide a summary without
pictures or can take you through to the glossary where pictures are
included.

8. Interactive Content
❖ iMovie
❖ Basic video editing application
provided on all macs. FREE.
❖ Easy to use and creates basic but
slick videos.
❖ Tip - if you’re creating a lot of video
content use a low resolution.
❖ Can take up a lot of space on
computer - bear in mind before
beginning.

10. Interactive Content
❖ iPhoto
❖ Once again… Apple product.
❖ Only used to edit photos slightly
to enhance and crop the
features being shown.
❖ Useful bit of free software that
supported all my photo editing
needs.

11. Interactive Content
❖ Widgets
❖ Many websites dedicated to creating
widgets.
❖ I chose bookry.com, free to use as
long as you credit their widget with
their logo.
❖ Could employ a slightly easier
method to create widgets.
❖ More complicated widgets than mine
could require more investment of
both time and money.

13. Things to think about
❖ Do you want your iBook to be free? - brings a whole new
range of issues.
❖ Do you want your iBook to be available on androids or
kindles etc.?
❖ Think about purchasing an instructional handbook -
save time on trial and error.
❖ How to control the distribution of your iBook outside of
the Apple store.

14. Setbacks
❖ Finding and creating the interactive content - photos of
clinical signs particularly.
❖ The amount of space taken up by the videos created for
the iBook.
❖ Creating the cover design - required expertise in design
software I did not possess.
❖ For the iBook to be used by the Manchester Medical
School it had to be certified by two consultants.

15. Summary
❖ Educational iBooks can be created by both students and
staff in a relatively small amount of time.
❖ They require very little prior knowledge and experience.
❖ There are a number of useful free applications out there
that can help make your iBook look great.
❖ Prior thought should be given to publishing and
distribution of the iBooks.

16. Any Questions?