My eyes have been opened to the idea of producing ePUB documents for education. I didn’t realize how easy it was to do on the Macintosh with Pages, the iWork word processing application. I put together an ePUB ebook inside of about 30 minutes mixing text, audio clips, video, and web links using Pages. Now, it wasn’t pretty, but the ease with which I could produce something with all those elements really made me start thinking: why not have our students and teachers start producing such work? Talk about a collaborative, real-world, project-based assignment that would cover several learning styles!
So, now I have to try to find an equivalent piece of software for the Windows side of things. Sure, Adobe InDesign will work well, but it’s a bit pricey, especially in this time of budget cuts and spending freezes. I started thinking, well, if Pages will do it on a Mac, why not Word for Windows? I tried searching on Microsoft’s site and look what I found:

Can you believe it?! NOTHING!
So, instead I’m off to Google to see what I can find. If you have experience or suggestions for inexpensive ePUB software for creating and laying out ePUBs on Windows, please comment. I’ve started looking at eCub, but other than that, I’d like to have something simple. I realize you can use Word, then save to HTML and/or PDF, then convert, etc. but we need to make this EASY or no one will want to do it.
I started putting together an ePUB wiki on the subject as well, just as a one-stop-shop.
Thanks for any suggestions / comments you may have on the subject. I think ePUB can be a powerful tool for learning in the classroom, if used correctly.