Oops. I did not mean for you to even try to answer my questions. Just tossing them out as feedback. Our enrollment is so low I cannot make the numbers. My class only runs once a year, and I’m lucky if I get six students per class. It’s only allowed to run with such low enrollment because it’s required for a couple of our degrees. So I don’t think SafariU is going to be viable for my particular situation, but it’s very promising.

As a side note, your blog is on the SafariU radar. Within a week of my post they contacted me and offered a hands-on tutorial by phone. They also let me know that several Maricopans have accounts and are working on projects. Their level of service seems wonderful.

Via CogDogBlog.

RenaissanceU es un servicio que permite que el profesor monte su libro de texto perfecto, seleccionando contenido de una biblioteca disponible de más de 1800 tomos de editores de prestigio como O’Reilly, Addison-Wesley Professional…

It appears use of other digital assets are possible!

Sorry for the apparent obstacles– not dealing with these issues, I do not have any direct answers. Getting SafariU as a vendor should be trivial; the questions of their licensing terms needs to go to the purchasing folks. I would suggest funneling the question upward to Paul G, your top tech person at Phoenix College, who can then get it reviewed by the District Purchasing office which deals with vendor relations.

If its numbers that are needed, the route that may work is promoting some conversation via the appropriate instructional councils that would include disciplines that might use SafariU as a service- not just the web design, but CIS, etc.

Trying to avoid that, I checked out SafariU. I need to teach a little XHTML, a little JavaScript, a little CSS, and image creation and optimization using Photoshop. My art department says I must teach using Dreamweaver in the belief that it is the industry standard (as if an industry that changes as rapidly as the web has an unchanging standard).

I found it a bit tedious to search through all the content, but promising.

The drawback for me is that you can only use the service for free if you can produce a certain amount of dollars in sales to your students. How am I going to get Maricopa to order anything from such a new service? Don’t they have to be on an approved vendor list or something? My bookstore staff were at a loss as to how I should proceed.

Looks like I may have to write that book after all.

I’m glad there are some flexible text solutions, but like Alan,
I’d like the availability to go farther.

Text is only one element I’d like to be able to chose from.
To this point, publishers have been separating text and graphic from their other elements like flash interactivities and other web-based assests.

The only thing is these efforts are mainly for books in the IT area, it would be nice to see it go farther.