Thursday, September 4

Amazing Free e-Learning eBooks Collection


But first, I would like to wish all Muslim readers...

RAMADAN MUBARAK!

For those of you who have no idea what Ramadan is, you can click here for starters.

"...It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims do not eat or drink anything from dawn until sunset. Fasting is meant to teach the person patience, sacrifice and humility. Ramadan is a time to fast for the sake of God, and to offer even more prayer than usual. In Ramadan Muslims ask forgiveness for past sins, pray for guidance into the future, ask for help in refrain from everyday evils and try to purify themselves through self-restraint and good deeds."

Non-Muslims often think that fasting is a burden to Muslims, but we mostly look forward to it, and really enjoy the daily little struggles. Besides the obvious reasons (health, spiritual growth, empathy, bonding, sharing, awakening, discipline, etc.), I love this month because my brain neurons (or synapses) become more active, stimulating new creative connections during it. Also, my energy level increases. However, this energy increase does not seem to apply to many of my Muslim colleagues (I suppose I am bit different in that sense!). One reason could be that the blood circulation to the brain increases during fasting, while the stomach and digestion organs are taking food-free yoga lessons during the day (Can a doctor please explain 'why'?). In short, I love the month of Ramadan for many reasons.


e-LEARNING eBOOKS COLLECTION

I suppose to continue with the spirit of learning and sharing during this special month, I have compiled an 'Amazing' collection of free e-Learning ebooks in a quite visual stimulating chunked manner (Instructional Designers please evaluate!). Well, whether it is 'Amazing' or not, I leave it up to you to decide. I suppose I used that word to attract your attention, and if you are reading now, I suppose it is kind of working. This time around, I have dumped SlideShare for SlideBoom to stimulate your mind to explore a bunch of interesting free e-learning related ebooks, and sites to find more ebooks:




Click here to download the PDF version (46 MB).

Here are the quick links (my favorite! Easy to access and replicate by others!):
  1. LEARNING 2.0
  2. Educating the Net Generation
  3. Learning Spaces
  4. Theory and Practice of Online Learning
  5. Open Educational Resources Handbooks: One, Two, Three
  6. The Insider's Guide To Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro
  7. Top 100 Tools for Learning
  8. MASIE’s Free eContent!
  9. FREE eBooks from The eLearning Guild
  10. e-LearningGuru's 5-Minute Summaries
  11. ICT in Schools: A Handbook for Teachers
  12. E-Learning Concepts and Techniques
  13. Coming of Age: An Introduction to the New WWW
  14. Knowing Knowledge
  15. Moodle E-Learning Course Development
  16. Using Moodle
  17. FREE Guide to Online Education
  18. Informal Learning
  19. Engaging Interactions For eLearning
  20. The Cluetrain Manifesto
  21. Stephen Downes Papers, Presentations and Books
  22. KINEO Magic!
  23. Learning Technologies (250+ Articles!)
  24. Horizon Reports
  25. Clive's 33 Columns
  26. Creating Learning Communities
  27. Digital Education
  28. Web-Teaching
  29. Brandon Hall Free Resources
  30. elearningeuropa Papers
  31. Learning Circuits Field Guides
  32. eLearn Magazine Articles Archive
  33. EDUCAUSE Books
  34. Google Book Search
  35. Project Gutenberg
  36. Scribd
  37. LearnOutLoud.com
  38. LibriVox
  39. Great Books Index
  40. CIA World Factbook
  41. FreeBookSpot
  42. FreeTechBooks.com
  43. OnlineComputerBooks
  44. Free-eBooks
  45. ManyBooks
  46. Globusz
  47. BookYards
  48. The Online Books Page
  49. Wikibooks
  50. Free eBooks
  51. Free Online BookStore


SLIDEBOOM ROCKS!
SlideShare is still my favorite free slide-sharing site, but SlideBoom is quickly becoming my next favorite one. What do I mean? I will be using both from now on. For the sake of giving SlideShare a wake up call, here are five things I like about SlideBoom, which SlideShare currently lack (hopefully they will upgrade soon!):
  1. First, you can upload PowerPoint 2007 files (.pptx), meaning you don't need to convert to PDF or .ppt before uploading (if you are using Microsoft Office 2007).
  2. Your original presentation keeps its features after conversion, including content style, animation effects, transitions, embedded audio and embedded video. This is a major weakness in the existing version of SlideShare, which really annoys me. To keep my presentations intact, I have to upload them as a PDF file.
  3. The uploading process is faster and more pleasant (well at least from my notebook and network). I suppose they have fewer users and uploads to manage. It will be interesting to see SlideBoom tackle this, when the user/viewer tsunami comes.
  4. The presentation seems to run smoother in the browser, and you can even create annotations (using pen, highlighter, eraser, etc.) to any SlideBoom presentation to point out its key ideas.
  5. The heart of SlideBoom is based on iSpring (An add-in PowerPoint to Flash converter), which enables you to convert PowerPoint to Flash offline, speeding up the process, while retaining the presentation's original effects better.
Having said that, SlideBoom's presentation size is currently limited to 30 MB (easy to upgrade!), while SlideShare enables 100 MB per presentation. In terms of users and presentation views, SlideShare still rocks big time! For example, the most viewed presentation (as of today) on SlideBoom is only 3100+, while SlideShare's most viewed presentation is a whopping 1.6 million+.

In a slideshell, I will not give up on SlideShare just yet, but you never know in the future. Anyway, why not use both! Perhaps I should consider a third free alternative. Got any suggestions?

Oops! You might be wondering, "what happened to the '101 OER' presentation I was talking about in the previous post?" Coming soon hopefully. What happened to your non-blogging vacation? Al-Hamdulilla, Ramadan awakens again my need to share amazing learning resources quickly.

Oops, one more juicy item! I have updated the 140+ free learning tools list with one more juicy learning problem solver (in addition to SlideBoom). Hint: Unlimited storage :)

11 comments:

Rashmi said...

Zaid,

SlideShare is all about the social - about your slides being found, getting the attention they deserve.

We love educational content and we would hate to loose you as a user.

Rashmi
SlideShare cofounder

ZaidLearn said...

Dear Rashmi,

Thanks for your feedback. No worries mate, I have no plans to migrate from SlideShare any time soon. I am just giving it a small wake up call, because I want to continue using it. In other words, I don't want SlideShare to become another Netscape.

Anyway, SlideShare is still a great social slide-sharing tool, but it just needs to keep an open eye on all the innovation going on out there today, innovate, and continue to be the best of the best in its domain :)

When we think of search, we think of Google, and when we think of sharing slides online, we think of SlideShare ...

If it can keep such a benchmark with its users, then great :)


Warm Regards,

Zaid

peter said...

hi! i'm from ukrain, sorry fo may english!
i'm a teacher at high school and i've used slideshare for 3 month, but 2 months ago on of my friends showed me slideboom. O, man, this is really cool!
Because opn a slideshare i can't use animation, and somrtimes i'he got a problem to upload my presentation.
So, i think slideboom it's a greatest place to share your powerpoint presentation!

rws said...

Thanks for great post, can't wait to check out all these great links to free elearning resources!
Happy New Year!

RWS

Anonymous said...

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082137960929 Ardyanto Yudiwibowo Jual Rumah dan Tanah di Pati said...

Dear Zaid

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Unknown said...

but 2 months ago on of my friends showed me slideboom. O, man, this is really cool!
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Unknown said...

i think slideboom it's a greatest place to share your powerpoint presentation!
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Nanang said...

Thanks for sharing the amazing collection of e-learning books.

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