Stories of 3 books

1
Stories of 3 books

• Jeanine Meyer
• Sigma Xi
• Purchase College

2
Outline

• Multimedia student projects, 1996
• Teaching programming using games, 2001
• Creating databases for web applications course,
  June, 2003.
• Discussion
• why write a book
• publishing process

3
Flashback to early '90s

• Multimedia orchestration of text, images,
  sound, animation, video, and interactions
• Software and hardware made 'desktop' multimedia
  feasible
• Technology solution in search of a problem!
• Companies producing multimedia educational
  products
• benefits unclear
• Pre-Web

4
Student projects

• IBM also producing (at great costs) multimedia
  titles
• Meanwhile, in schools (including elementary
  schools) teachers guiding their students to use
  Hypercard and Linkway to produce projects
• anecdotally, great results
• some research indicating significant benefits
• Colleges (and some schools) using higher-powered
  tools, including Director, Toolbook, others

5
Lost in Atlanta

• Dr. Florence Mann, NYC Board of Education,
  Technology Assistance Centers, on visit to IBM
  Atlanta
• "Teachers need to learn the why along with the
  how."
• I promised a workshop
• gathered together group to do it.
• Anne Kellerman, Palmer Agnew
• friends at IBM Research

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Workshop

• Basics regarding hardware and software
• Specific 'generic' projects for students to do
• Discussion on assessment, teams, schedule,
  logistics, etc.
• ? success
• ? led us to consider doing a book

7
Process

• Mentor advised us on the publishing process,
  namely, producing a proposal
• description of book, including course(s),
  competition, unique features
• table of contents
• chapter format
• "A heads and B heads"
• 1 to 3 sample chapters
• Target publishers
• some iteration on proposal. This can be long!
• Contract
• schedule, royalties (more or less standard), some
  negotiation on work

8
Process, continued

• Completed chapters
• Technical edit
• Copy edit
• Layout
• Indexing
• Marketing copy
• Publication

9
Reflection

• The book was a cause.
• Very badly timed with respect to technology
• typical
• many of the lessons of the book are independent
  of technology, but difficult case to make
• 'student projects' is how I/we teach Web
  technologies
• Nice achievement
• Limited amount of money
• Probably helped get full-time tenure track
  position at Pace University!

10
Next cause teaching programming

• Experience at Pace University (echoed by others)
  is that the first programming course
• attrition high (Nationally about 50 for CS1)
• many of remaining are not especially good
  programmers
• many who stay and many who go see programming as
  dull
• not just too difficult

11
My experience

• To better master Visual Basic, I programmed
  minesweeper
• wrote up tutorial
• went to Cathy Dwyer
• Planned set of games
• rock paper scissors, dice, memory, hangman,
  cannonball

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Pilots

• Included projects as 'extra credit' and then
  substantial part of courses
• Very positive results
• motivation AND achievement
• Games involve substantial programming and design
  of the user interface.
• Students push themselves. Students test/play
  their work.
• Very good for variety of students.

13
Finding a publisher

• Very slow decision process
• may have been internal conflicts
• and then got rejected from first and second
  choice.
• Course Technology
• not a likely prospect because they had Visual
  Basic books, including Diane Zaks book with 60
  of market
• Editor's idea to market this as a project book
  for the Zaks book

14
Process

• Same as before, except we had a developmental
  editor that helped significantly
• They did layout and index
• We (Cathy) needed to re-do (re-capture) the
  screen shots.
• Note much done on manuscripts, not on-line.

15
Reflection

• The book was a cause.
• We each used the book!
• Timing a problem Visual Basic went to VB.net
  (very different)
• Not much money
• Theory teachers requested desk copy or bought
  single copy but did not require students to buy.
• Frequently get e-mail from students asking for
  help
• Probably got tenure at Pace University based on
  book, general effort.

16
Current book

• Not quite a crusadeI wanted to learn
  'server-side', middleware programming
• php MySql (Open Source) and asp Access
  (Microsoft)
• included systems design topics (entity
  relationship modeling, process diagrams,
  storyboards) with programming
• Course in Fall, 2001
• successful (partially due to snacks, 9/11,
  students, student TA, etc.)
• Made presentation at conference, followed by
  request to post materials on site
• Approached by one publisher representative who
  then moved to Charles River Media who offered
  contract

17
Process

• Writing used charts from course. Wrote 'prose'
  prior to each class for second offering of the
  course. Made 12/31/02 deadline
• DRAMA hard disk crashed the day before official
  contract came!
• Technical edit responded to issues. Help from
  publisher/editors.
• some use of Word change facility, but also
  printing out hard copy. They claim they will
  improve figures.
• Just completed my approval/response to copy edit.

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example
19
example
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Reflection

• Kept me busy.
• My writing had improved based on previous
  efforts.
• Note technical reviewer said book is verbose,
  but that is a good thing.
• Will use book in Spring, 2004.
• ????

21
Issues Trends

• Dog versus dog owner
• Book for course/class adoption versus single sale
• Project book versus course book with auxiliaries
• Books so big that they will kill the family cat
• Complex design inserts, margin notes, etc.

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Discussion

• Why write a book?
• Publishing process