Part 1

Why It Matters

Learning Objectives

  • See how both starters are designed for readers and learners
  • Move content between tools, and bring it in from Pressbooks or an LMS
  • Reuse any page's Markdown, for your own purposes

Hello there, I'm Paul Hibbitts – I build free, open-source tools that turn Markdown into modern, self-managed websites for open educators and publishers. Before that, I taught user interface design for over 25 years, mostly at SFU, where I opened up my CMPT-363 course with public course hubs built with Docsify and Grav.

Open both ways: content that's open for readers often stays inside the platform for its authors – harder to edit elsewhere, move or keep. What if it were open for both?

This guide shows two free tools that are designed for readers and learners, let authors move their content, and let anyone reuse it.

The DIY answer: plain Markdown

A simple text format for web pages – **bold**, ## Heading, - list item. It's now supported almost everywhere, from GitHub and note-taking apps to Google Docs, and it's widely used by other tools, including AI. Keep every page in Markdown, on a free site you control.

No slides needed: this one guide works as a presentation, a web page to read at your own pace, an LMS embed, a printout or Markdown – all from a single source. Write once, use anywhere.

This work by Paul Hibbitts is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Cover photo by chris robert on Unsplash.