Showing posts with label Hackathon. Show all posts

This is a 'Hackathon'

By Unknown | Published Monday, June 17, 2013

GR- iBooks Author Hackathon, photo via Steve Dickie

I can't tell you how often I get asked the question: "Why is this called the iBooks Author Hackathon? What does that mean?" Let's break it down and tell you why.

What is a 'Hackathon'?

According to Wikipedia

an event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week in length. Some hackathons are intended simply for educational or social purposes, although in many cases the goal is to create usable software.

But aren't 'hackathons' just for programmers? Nope! Back in February 2012, Steven Leckart wrote in Wired Magazine

The trend [hackathon] has already spread beyond the conventional tech world. There are women-only hackathons, hackathons for teens, hackathons for college students, hackathons to fight autism, hackathons to improve education, hackathons to help veterans, hackathons to build Occupy Wall Street protest tools, hackathons on clean energy...

So this is how we found ourselves calling this the iBooks Author Hackathon. It is a multi-day, intensive, collaborative event to create usable products that will improve education...this is a hackathon!

The Characteristics of an iBooks Author Hackathon

1. Passionate and creative educators seeking to author high quality interactive content.
To date over 85 educators and a half a dozen trainers have come together at a hackathon to learn about iBooks Author and create interactive 'books' for their content area / grade level. In addition, participants learn about copyright, creative commons licenses, open educational resources and a way to collaborate with colleagues to share these books.

2. Collaboration of workers to create in community.
We truly believe one of the factors that makes this event so powerful is the ability to collaborate with a common goal in mind. Participants spend some time throughout the two days whiteboarding their thoughts and ideas for their books. A lot of our time is spent with individuals helping them think through creative ways to build their books.

3. Inspiring each other with their creativity and sharing of ideas.
In addition to collaboration, sharing is another big goal of this project. Too often teachers create and work in isolation from one another. A key factor of any hackathon or Google 20% time is to share out what you are working on, what you are creating and get feedback, input, and help from the greater audience. Throughout our time together we paused to share out what we were doing.

4. Energy and a buzz of excitement around the end goal.

For me, this is perhaps the greatest characteristic of these events. A full day of professional development can be a lot to ask of a teacher especially in June (early June). But we weren't asking for 1 day, this was 2 FULL days of learning and making. At the end you'd expect folks to be checking out, playing games, and basically doing anything but creating. Not here.

Participants worked up to the bell. They were excited about the potential for impact these interactive modules (see and download my examples here) could have. They weren't jumping through some administrative hoop, they weren't checking an item off their to-do list. Rather, the product they were making was desirable, it will help teachers and schools sustain their iPad environments, and the they could grasp how to make it happen through the training and resources they were equipped with.

Of course when you put on a hackathon there are a few requirements to keep that edge of excitement. For us, that meant raffles a few times throughout the day, a video chat from the team at Bookry.com, cool t-shirts supplied by Bookry for the participants, awesome lunch food, great snacks throughout the event and finally a free registration towards MACUL 2014 to give away.

This was a great two days of making. We have several more planned throughout the summer (see details here). However, we also recognize this is the first in a string of years to come that will be necessary to truly meet the end goals of this project- open educational ibooks for k-12 content- that others can download, personalize, and distribute to their students.

Posted in digital textbooks, Hackathon, iBooks Author, iPad, professional development | Leave a comment

Reflections from First iBooks Author Hack Event

By Unknown | Published Monday, June 3, 2013

It has begun. Over the past 6 months this moment has been built up, played out, and romanticized in my mind. It is hard to believe that the first of several of these 2 day events has come and gone. This marks the beginning of the summer of an amazing movement by k-12 educators around the nation to make open educational ibooks. This project is described in more detail on our website: http://mibookexchange.wix.com/ibahackathon

If you haven’t heard of Monte Vista Christian Schools it’s because it may be the countries best kept private school secret. This beautiful campus is tucked away in the outskirts of Watsonville, CA and is home to about 800 middle and high school students. Among their many claims to fame is the fact that they were the first school to go one to one iPads in the U.S. And now they are first into this initiative to create a repository of open educational ibooks for k-12 education.

Our relationship began a few months ago when high school principal Steve Woods reached out to me and asked if I’d be willing to come out host a hackathon event on their campus. Here are a few reflections on our time.

There were 25 hackers in all from San Francisco to Santa Cruz to Los Angelos (actually the folks from LA had to drop at the last minute but are still participating virtually). We gathered on the beautiful campus of Monte Vista Christian School in a Mac computer lab perfect the size of group we had.

We spent a few minutes talking about how this project came to be, why it is important to k-12 education, and what the end goals are. The following two hours consisted of learning about iBooks Author as an authoring tool and attendees built their first book using resources that I had gathered for them. Even though most of us didn’t get around to creating our actual books in iBooks Author I think it is best to spend that morning time learning the authoring tool and showing attendees the possibilities of an interactive learning experience.

Right before lunch we were privileged to get a Google hangout chat with the wonderful staff from Bookry.com. If you don’t know what Bookry is all about I encourage you to check them out. In a nutshell they provide complimentary service to educators creating widgets to use in their iBooks. Rhys, the company founder, gave us an overview of their upcoming quiz widget, sure to be a smashing success among educators looking to get student feedback on a variety of question types.

The afternoon consisted of learning about copyright, creative commons, and public domain content. I want to thank Josh Mika (@ijoshmika) and the invaluable resources he has provided in this area. I don’t know if we could have spent enough time on this topic as it is surely a concern when creating digital content. We scoured the resources provided in our iTunesU course in addition to learning a few search techniques for finding creative commons content.

Another good chunk of our afternoon consisted of learning about the collaborative space we will all be working in to access each others work and build our repository. The space we have chosen to do this in is called Box.com. Again, if you haven’t looked into Box I highly recommend them as they offer some amazing services in addition to their cloud storage. This area of the training came to take up more time than I had anticipated as folks needed to see how to function within this platform. So we ended up spending another hour demonstrating how a content area team could work together to create different chapters of the same book. This did prove to be beneficial and I believe Box will help us attain our goals.

In upcoming hackathons I will do this a little differently, including getting folks into this space sooner, stashing content there for them to download and experiment with and model the collaboration process. Furthermore, it became evident that people need to see a workflow modeled for them. Including how to search, find, and attribute open educational resources. They need to be exposed to tools such as Skitch for capturing their screen, Textmate for editing HTML code, and the basic Apple suite such as Quicktime, Keynote, Pages, and iMovie for creating and formatting content.

Overall, it was a success. I consider it so because it’s a first step down a long road of creating high quality multi-touch interactive books that others can download, personalize, and distribute to their students. Without the first step of exposing them to the project, training them in the tools, and bringing them into the collaboration the movement would have not begun. We would have continued to create in isolation. However, the community is forming, the learning is beginning, the content is growing, the ideas are improving, the flywheel is starting to move.

Posted in creativity, digital textbooks, Hackathon, iBooks Author, iPad | 1 Comment

iBooks Author Hackathon-- #Macul13 reflection pt. 3

By Unknown | Published Tuesday, April 9, 2013

bit.ly/ibahack

This was the event I was waiting for at #Macul13. Finally a chance for Steve Dickie (@falconphysics) and I (@anthonydilaura) to tell a wider audience about a large scale cooperative project that will bring educators together to create high quality, interactive content using iBooks Author.

This hour long presentation was an absolute high for me. This is where my passion lies: collaborating with highly motivated, creative educators to create and share digital content that will undoubtedly innovate the way iPad classrooms will function.

Working with Steve and co-presenting this project with him felt like we had been working with one another for years even though it was only our second time of being in the same room. Steve is an incredibly brilliant science teacher that approaches teaching and learning from a very artistic angle. What he brings to this project and to those hacking science content is invaluable.

About the Project

Here is a brief overview of the project as we described it to our audience. For further information see my article that was published at Edudemic.com on March 28th, 2013 and check out the projects website here.

What: Multiple two-day events that bring teachers together to learn how to author content using iBooks Author. Collaborate in content area or grade level teams to divide up and conquer common core aligned granular size learning modules that are shared among teachers.

Who: Motivated and creative teachers working in an iPad learning environment as they will most directly benefit from these resources.

Why: There are literally 100's of reasons perhaps 1000's if you consider the amount of money a district can save and redistribute to support student learning by having teachers create and use these "digital textbooks." But first and foremost is the reason of student learning. What I have experienced and what research backs is that when a curriculum is more personalized and tailored to differentiate for student needs they are more likely to succeed and own the learning. Content delivered in this manner allows the teacher to re-purpose their face to face time. It allows class time to be spent on a deeper exploration and transfer of content.

Why this is so exciting?

It's not that this technology is so amazing and new that gets me giddy. Rather, it is the idea of accomplishing this task together, collaborating and sharing with a group of like minded teachers. Let's face it that doesn't always happen in our building, department, grade level groups.

I don't look at this technology as something so innovative that it will blow our doors off. However, I do believe the results of this project are something that could allow teachers to innovate their classroom practices in a way that blows the doors off their student's learning. That, to me, is very exciting.

I want to learn. I want to share what I know. Doesn't everyone want professional development to be like this? Learn from others and share what you know put them together to advance education. However, how often do we sit and humbly (or selfishly) remain quiet in department meetings? Or how often do we as teachers not have the buy in for what our PD is about?

This event will be teacher driven and grassroots. It's not an order coming down from the administrators (at least not yet- ours is thinking about telling departments "no more textbooks"). It will call upon the creativity of many, it will deepen the creativity of many, and it has the potential to deepen the creativity of students.

Posted in edhackcamp, Hackathon, iBooks Author, iPad, Macul, textbook | Leave a comment

A Letter to #MASSP-- Encourage Collaboration

By Unknown | Published Friday, April 5, 2013

Hello Michigan Secondary School Principals,

Many of us had the chance to chat at the iPad Summit held in East Lansing a few weeks ago. But for those of us who didn't I wanted to take a moment and inform/remind you about the iBooks Author Collaborative project going on this summer. If you're currently, or will be soon, educating in a 1 to 1 iPad environment at any grade level this project is a worthy investment of your money and your staff's time.

We all reach a point in our iPad initiatives when we must evaluate the technology, address how it is transforming our teaching and learning practice, and answer the question 'how will we sustain the program?' I deeply believe this project can help us address all of these concerns.

Collaborate - Create- Share

The iBooks Author collaborative is a project that will bring teachers together to create and share high quality, digital 'textbook' content. Teachers participating in this event will also have access to the content created by other teachers so that they can adopt their work and personalize it for their own students.

We know, and research shows, a personalized learning experience is a contributing factor to an engaging and successful learning experience. Teachers will have the ability to update and personalize these interactive ebooks which is unlike any other hard bound textbook.

The vast amount of digital content readily available online along with access to high end authoring tools like iBooks Author makes a great case for this project. However, to the average teacher, the task to create this digital content can seem daunting unless we work together. I have no doubt that by participating in a hackathon event this summer your staff will be well on its way to authoring authentic content, increasing their expertise in their field, stimulating their creativity, and leading your school into a deeper and more meaningful level of tech integration.

I want to ask you to encourage your creative and motivated staff members to get involved. The cost of the two day event is minimal ($30). I want to ask you to support their efforts, possibly offer participants $200 for creating shareable content. What could possibly cost the district $2000 this summer (sending 10 hackers) could possibly lead to saving tens of thousands of dollars in the coming years by not having to purchase textbooks.

In conclusion, we truly believe the better reason for getting involved is the benefit to student learning that will occur as a result of your teachers getting highly active in collaborating, creating, and sharing these resources.

Please feel free to ask further questions or direct teachers to our website and Google Community.

Posted in digital textbooks, Hackathon, iBooks Author, leadership, MASSP | Leave a comment

Hack Your Student's Textbook- #Macul13 sessions on iBooks Author

By Unknown | Published Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Over 4000 people from across the midwest will descend upon Cobo Hall in Detroit, MI over the next few days to attend Macul13. Undoubtedly they will hear dynamic keynotes, learn about cool apps, and get a peek into top edtech teachers classrooms. And, while there are a plethora of excellent sessions to attend, I want to recommend a few "must see" sessions for those of us in an iPad teaching and learning environment.

Your students next textbook is written by YOU.

The sessions highlighted below pertain to using iBooks Author to create interactive learning modules (think units of a textbook). All are put on by excellent trainers, most of which, will be apart of this summer's iBooks Author Hackathon--a collaborative effort to create K-12 interactive learning mods. Check these sessions out during Macul, they will get you motivated to hack your students next textbook.

Thursday March 21

iBooks Author For Creating Interactive Books for an iPad - Workshop

1:00-3:00 pm W2-70 By: Dave Tchozewski

Dave Tchozewski +Dave Tchozewski is the Director of Information Technology for Jenison Public Schools and has a real heart for innovating the classroom. He will be running this two hour workshop to give teachers hands on experience with using this fascinating tool.

iBooks Author- Creating iPad Content for Education

4:00-5:00pm O3-45 By: Joanna Montgomery

Joanna is an expert in iBooks Author and did our training for us at Zeeland Public Schools last summer. She also works for Apple and serves as the DE for the east side of Michigan. Joanna will have you hooked on creating iBooks for sure.

Friday March 22

Innovating with iBooks Author and Pages

8:30-9:30 am D3-17 By: Steve Dickie +Steve Dickie

Steve is an incredibly creative and innovative science teacher who is partly responsible for this summers iBooks Author hackathon. He has incredible knowledge of the ins and outs of iBA and is looking forward to leading the east side of the state to author high quality content.

Join the iBooks Author Collaborative

11:30-12:30 pm DO-01A By: Anthony DiLaura +Anthony DiLaura & Steve Dickie +Steve Dickie

This is my session, so of course I think you should attend :) Steve and I are hoping to share with you the plans for this summer's collaborative project that is already spreading across the Midwest. Teachers from all over are coming together to create interactive textbooks. If you teach in an iPad environment you should be here as this is the future of teaching and learning!

iPads, iBooks Author, Screencasts, Edmodo & More: New Tools for High School Teachers

11:30-12:30 pm D3-17 By: Julie Kindred +Julie Kindred and Daniel Telgenhof

If you are wondering what the potential is for iPads and iBooks Author, this is a great session to attend. Julie Kindred, self proclaimed tech-illiterate, created her own AP Statistics book this past summer and is using it to teach her students this year. She will give you the full details of her journey and tell you how it is increasing student engagement and learning. She is a wonderful and charismatic personality that you have to get to know.

Creating Impressive, Interactive iBooks with iBooks Author

11:30-12:30 pm Craig Van Ham

Craig is an incredibly savvy ed tech teacher that cranks out tons of video tutorials on different web 2.0 tools and apps. Craig hosts this wonderful collection of helpful tutorials on MiLearning's iTunesU space. Craig also has created tutorials to get you started using iBooks Author.

So, I encourage you to check out a few of these sessions, get introduced to iBooks Author. And, if you are teaching in a 1:1 iPad environment, or soon will be, then you definitely want to get involved with the iBooks Author Hackathon going on this summer. For more details and registration check out the website here: http://mibookexchange.wix.com/ibahackathon

Disclaimer: I am not sure if there are more sessions going on at Macul highlighting this tool, sorry if I missed someone's session. Please add it to the comment section below.