Going soft – docx to epub

Like many schools, we are currently considering what devices students might be bringing to the class room in our near future.  This obviously raises fabulous questions about how we deliver content to students who have an iPad or netbook in front of them throughout the school day and beyond.

So I began the journey to discover how difficult it was going to be to convert resources from the commonly used MSWord version, and create a file that could be opened on a range of devices.  Epub seemed to be the most common file type that would be opened by e-readers, and a wonderfully timely tweet pointed me at a nice online tool to convert docx to epub.

I created a word document with images, hyperlinks, even a mailto link to test my conversion process.   I was surprised to find that none of these features were lost.  In fact Stanza, my preferred ereader, displayed most images, font colors/sizes and linked out beautifully to both the browser and email when tapped.  It even used its onboard dictionary to give me the meaning of my own words when requested.

Other formatting features were lost, quite surprisingly.  See list below:

• Page breaks were ignored
• Section breaks were also ignored
• Word Bookmarks were ignored as well
• Table of Contents built in word are also ignored.
  • (How you create chapters in the ebook I am yet to work out….)
• Using a line shape seemed to force a page break (although the line itself was not printed)
• Page size (A4/5) seemed to have little effect on the finished epub result
• Images are automatically upsized to fill the horizontal page space available
• I did lose the odd image or two, so I have to work out if there are restrictions on size (by file size and pixel) restrictions on what will display.
• Embedded video would not play within the e-reader.

The process was quite heartening, as I feel that with some guidance the average teacher could begin to convert the resources they are currently using to a file that could be read by a range of devices.  The trick will be making them understand the need.

Next steps will be to see if there is a way to embed rich media into some sort of file so that it will open either in the e-reader, or pop out to another app/program.  Obviously one could link to Youtube, but we are trying to replace a textbook, so the challenge is to see if we can do all this without the use of the web.