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Getting Started with Pressbooks

Pressbooks LogoPressbooks is an open-source, web-based authoring platform. The “Press” portion refers to the fact it is built on the WordPress web content creation platform, and the “Books” portion refers to the intention to use the tool for publishing open online books. Let’s look at some of the key features of Pressbooks.

Key Features

Pressbooks Account Activation

Pressbooks is a centrally managed network of individual books hosted by eCampusOntario and available for free to educators, students and staff at Ontario colleges, universities, and Indigenous institutes. This is Ontario’s Pressbooks homebase – and each book you create will have a home page on this network.

As a Fanshawe College employee, you have a Pressbooks account, but it will need to be activated. Please follow the steps below.

  1. Navigate to the eCampus Ontario Pressbooks login page
  2. Select “institutional login” and click Fanshawe College from the list.
  3. You will be directed to Fanshawe’s login page. Enter your credentials, and you should be able to access Pressbooks upon completion of authentication.
  4. Once successfully logged in, you’ll be presented with a page like the one you started with, but with “Admin” and “My Books” options (seen in the image below).

 

Landing page of eCampusOntario’s Pressbooks platform after logging in with “My Books” in top right corner"
eCampus Ontario’s Pressbooks Platform landing page.

Create a “Sandbox” Book 

Complete the steps below to create a test site/sandbox in Pressbooks. This will allow you to play around and test things out.

  1. Click on “Create a New Book”.
  2. Create your URL: the URL for all your resources will start with ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/ and you’ll be asked to fill in the remainder. Choose wisely because you won’t be able to change it later. For this Activity, call it “YourName” Sandbox.
  3. Add a title – “YourName” Sandbox
  4. Choose the language of the book (this corresponds to the language of the reader’s interface).
  5. Set Privacy: Choose “No” for this purpose, as you don’t want your “Sandbox” book to be visible to anyone but you!

Introduction” and “Getting Started” from Mastering Open Ed: Licensing, Accessibility, Creation, and Publishing OER Copyright © by alisonarthalearning. All Rights Reserved.

License

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