VLE Help Centre | Liverpool Community College

Using the “Book” Activity/Resource

Topics Outline:

1: Introduction

The Book module makes it easy to create multi-page resources with a book-like format, the book allows you to have chapters and sub chapters, it also displays a Table of Contents showing these on the left of the page. Another great feature of the Book module is its Print option, allowing students to hit the print button and receive a well formatted document from the printer.

The book module is not interactive. You can, however, link to choices, forums etc. from within a book. And you can include multimedia objects like Flash movies in your book.

2: Add a Book to your course:

Turn on editing in your course and choose the book resource from the drop down activity menu:


3: Give your book a name and a summary:

Enter a name for your book and provide a brief description of its content. Keep in mind that the name you give your book will become the text for the link to it on your main course page. This is true of all the activities you create in the Student Intranet.



4: Indicate how you want chapters numbered:

There are several predefined numbering types:

  • None – chapter and subchapter titles are not formatted at all, use if you want to define special numbering styles. For example letters: in chapter title type “A First Chapter”, “A.1 Some Subchapter”,…
  • Numbers – chapters and subchapters are numbered (1, 1.1, 1.2, 2, …)
  • Bullets – subchapters are indented and displayed with bullets.
  • Indented - subchapters are indented.


5: Enable or disable printing:

Disabling printing will hide the print icons. (The print option is one of this resource’s most popular features, so you might not want to disable it.)



6: Allow or disallow custom titles:

If you disallow custom titles, the chapter title (the one that appears on the table of contents) will appear as a header at the top of your content. If you enable custom titles, you will be allowed to create a title different from the one that appears in the ToC.


 

Custom Titles Enabled: The custom title (red arrow) is different than the title in the table of contents (green arrow).

Custom Titles Disabled: The titles in the table of contents and in the chapter are the same.


7: Add a chapter:

Titles of chapters appear as links in the table of contents to the left of your content. After creating your Book you will be asked to add your first chapter, subsequent chapters can be added after.

Keep your titles short as they have to fit into the navigation box on the left…



8: View work to date:

So far, you see the table of contents on the left and the content on the right. Note the print icons near the top.

To add another chapter, click on the red cross in the Table of Contents. The new chapter will be inserted directly after the chapter whose title is on the same line as the red cross you click.



9: Add a subchapter:

A chapter may have many subchapters. In order to keep this resource simple, you are however limted to two levels, therefor subchapters cannot have subchapters.

Note that the subchapter box is checked in the following screenshot. This will make this chapter a sub chapter of the one above…



10: Using Book & Importing:

One may, of course, use book to present information in a well-structured, user-friendly format. But there are other possibilities. Because this module allows one to import individual web pages or folders of web pages, it is useful for group work.

Example: Each student creates a simple web page about your school and the teacher, uploads the pages to the book. You and your students have created a useful, interesting resource for new students and their parents.

You could do this to create a class cook book and nutrition guide, a resource about local civic organizations, triangles in our daily lives, world leaders, you name it.


Click on the import link


 

Note: Relative file links are converted to absolute chapter links. Images, Flash and Java are relinked too.

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