Welcome, Navigation, and More!

Welcome, welcome! In this spring edition of our quarterly newsletter we’ve decided to say good-bye to Microsoft Sway and try out Pressbooks, a digital book platform the Seattle Colleges has held a subscription to for the past few years. Not only can you create openly accessible textbooks, anthologies, guides, and catalogs with Pressbooks, but, as we’re here to demonstrate, you can also design departmental newsletters!

As a group of Instructional Designers on a District-wide eLearning team, we couldn’t be happier to switch platforms. Though Sway can create a very professional looking newsletter, all four of us have run into difficulties adding content, modifying layout and design, as well as navigating smoothly from section to section.

We hope you enjoy this quarter’s newsletter!

Navigating Pressbooks

If you’ve used Pressbooks before, please feel welcome to skip ahead! If you haven’t, we offer a few navigational pointers in the bulleted list below.

• On every individual book’s dashboard, you have the option to enter the digital text by selecting the “Read Book” button or by scrolling down the page to see the linked table of contents.
• Once you’re in the book, you can select the “Previous” and “Next” links on the lower-left and lower-right of each chapter to move forward and backward.
• You can also select the “Contents” from the left-side of the screen and navigate to any chapter in the book you’d like to read. For chapters with plus buttons, select the plus icons to engage with additional contents.
• If you’d like to jump to the top of a chapter, select the circle with the up arrow that will appear in the middle of the screen.
• If you’d like to return to the book’s dashboard at any time, select the linked book title that appears in the top middle portion of each chapter.
• To search the book, use the open field box in the upper-right hand corner.
• You can click on images, videos, links, and activities throughout our newsletter. Feel welcome to skip past anything that’s not appealing or interesting.
• If you’d like to leave the webbook but still read the newsletter, please download the digital pdf version or ePub version available on the book’s dashboard.

Short Navigational Video Demo

We’ve included a less than five minute video demonstrating how to navigate the eLearning Newsletter on Pressbooks. Select the CC button in the lower right corner of the video, if you’d like to enable the captions.

Access and Accessibility

Because this Pressbook is publicly visible, anyone who has the url can enter and navigate the book without login barriers. In short, you don’t have to be a faculty or staff member of the Seattle Colleges to have access, though readers may notice that a few links in the book require Seattle Colleges logins. As of July 31st, we will add our newsletter to the Pressbooks Directory; it’s also available in the Seattle Colleges District OpenWA Pressbooks Catalogs.

Pressbooks has worked hard to create an accessible platform that meets WCAG 2.2 standards (to learn more, select the VPAT reports tab). Similar to Canvas, digital accessibility depends on what the users put into their creations. Thus, we’ve created this Pressbook with best accessibility practices in mind. These include, but are not limited to:

• Hierarchal heading structure
• Alternative text for images
• Descriptive links
• Captions or linked text for videos
• Mindful use of color
• Interactive activities that, in theory, should be accessibility standards
• Malala book theme
• Alternative formats (digital pdf and ePub)

Should you encounter any issues with access or accessibility while using this Pressbook, please reach out to us.

Book Cover Image

Our book cover image was created in Canva by one of the four eLearning Instructional Designers. It depicts our schools’ mascots outside, under a tree, relaxing together on flower studded grass. Specifically, a frog (North’s mascot) sits reading a pink book to a sleepy otter (South’s mascot) and a tiger (Central’s mascot). All three are wearing jaunty party hats. While the frog has an iced coffee on the grass, the otter rests on a stack of pillows against a tree; the tiger, in turn, rests partially on the otter’s lap and partially on the grass. In the distance, a flock of blue seagulls (District’s mascot) appears, and in the upper right hand corner, a brown, cream, and peach colored blimp with the text “eLearning Newsletter” on the side, hovers just below two clouds. The image’s purpose is to amuse, delight, and remind us that at the end of a long academic year, finding time to party, read, and relax (especially outside) is a goal for many of us.

Media Attributions

• “Pressbooks Navigational Demo Video” by Seattle Colleges eLearning Instructional Designers is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
• “Spring Newsletter Cover Image” by Seattle Colleges eLearning Instructional Designers is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.