Initial email
This is the initial email you got. Do these things! Note that I've put the appendix as a separate document for you in this assignment.
Initial letter
Dear Colleagues,
It's under a week now until the Joint Meetings, and with that, under a week until the minicourse "Using and Making Integrated Online Textbooks with MathBook XML", starting Wednesday afternoon. I'm still the organizer, and I'm still looking forward to introducing you to MBX for making open educational resources! (And welcome to those new to the participant list since the first email.)
I hope you have all been able to have a rest after submitting grades but before the meetings and the new term. If so (and even if not), I have three items of "homework" to maximize our on-site, in-person time for the workshop.
First, and most importantly, please try to set the (wireless-enabled) computer you will use for the workshop up for the workshop. This mainly involves either setting yourself up in a cloud service, or downloading certain easy tools for your computer. (Or both.)
See the other files for instructions and links to tutorial videos. If you want the workshop leader to be able to easily “check your work”, you may wish to use the Cloud option in addition to any option locally on your computer.
Start brainstorming about your ground-breaking open text! Or just for an idea about a short course supplement you could try starting at the workshop.
Be aware of the post-workshop evaluation survey instrument at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3BCPMCV No, don't fill it out yet 😃 but we all know that our students don't fill those eval forms out without repeated reminders, so I figured I'd get a head start.
If you have any trouble with your setup, please don't hesitate to email me, and I'll respond as best I can with the upcoming holiday. Or, better, join the MathBook XML support list (see links below) which will have a far bigger online community to help out. As always, see http://mathbook.pugetsound.edu and the many resources there as well for tons of reference, quickstart, etc.
We'll see you Wednesday afternoon at 4:45 in Atlanta! Karl-Dieter Crisman