Bookbinding is a specialized trade that relies on basic operations of measuring, cutting, and gluing. The craft of bookbinding probably originated in India, where religious texts were copied on to palm leaves with a metal stylus. Modern times book binding is a far cry from the centuries old painstaking process and hundreds of hours invested into making a book. If we were to embark upon learning how to do book binding, these days my options of learning are numerous, such as the Internet, You tube videos, workshops, books, podcasts etc.

According to Anderson (2003), what we can expect is that online learning – like all forms of quality learning – are knowledge, community & assessment, and earner-centered. I find that there is some truth to this statement.
In searching out our chosen topic of “Book Binding”, I first used google’s “all” search as a starting point. Google’s “all” search (reachable through a top level tag on the google page) returned (in appearance); ads, google answers, company web sites, and then (prominently) videos. The most appealing were the videos. The following is a synopsis of one video I viewed, and is indicative of my qualification process of a content piece. The qualification of content is a mental process I go through when establishing the merits of a specific piece of instructional content.

Title: Kettle Stitch Binding

I chose this video based on;
• views; over 2 million
• the content author’s image icon was inviting
• the video author is “verified” (signified by a blue check mark next to the icon); a “verified” video producer is one that YouTube has verified is a strong content contributor
• the video author has over 1.01 million “subscribers” (content consumers who regularly view this author’s content, and are alerted by the creation of new content)
• the content creator has further links to follow that lead to multiple other videos surrounding the same subject
• the author has content on other social media platforms that are linked to from her profile
Features of the video:
• uses common thread and needle, and beeswax
• mentions “signature”, “binding hole”, “Case Binding”, “Kettle Stitch Binding”, “Coptic Stitch Binding” keywords, with no explanation; but this leads me to further google searches that I follow for further information about the overall topic
• the author points out that this is only about the “stitching” portion of the process, which leads me to do further searching and consumption of the author’s video

Further searches led me to other video content and other content on other social media. I viewed over 5 videos, read over 10 twitter posts, and scanned 5 instagram posts following just the “stitching” of the book binding process, which this initial video explained. In fact, the amount of time and effort I used in just searching out this one facet of the process quickly became overbearing. There was almost too much depth, and I had to make a decision to move on to other parts of the process, where again, there were many, varied resources available. Overall, the process did unearth enough material for me to learn from, but it required decisions of what resource path to follow, and a qualification by myself of the usefulness of the resource, and I found the entire process very time intensive.

                                                                                                    References

Anderson, T. (2016). Chapter 3: Theories for Learning with Emerging Technologies. In Veletsianos, G. (Ed). Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.
Anderson, T., & Garrison, D.R. (1998). Learning in a networked world: New roles and responsibilities. In C. Gibson (Ed.), Distance learners in higher education (pp. 97–112). Madison, WI: Atwood.