Letters from the Edge

It's here!

'Letters from the Edge' is the collaboratively authored 'book' from this past summer's UnPlug'd 12 event.  We really struggled with the challenge of authoring a book that could be accessible by on any multi-media device, so rather than adopting a portable book format, we settled on HTML5.

Coding our book using modern HTML, results in a work that can be experienced in similar ways whether viewing on desktop, tablet, or smartphone.  The format also allows us to engage audio, video and photo elements to deliver a multimedia reading experience.

I encourage you to take time to savour our e-publication.  The letters were written and edited by educators from Canada, the USA and Australia who participated in the first international UnPlug'd event.  Video and audio elements were recorded at 'The Edge', our host site, which is perched on the border of Algonquin Park.

UnPlugd12 authors can be followed on Twitter and through the personal blogs which are highlighted alongside each letter.  Although the back-stories are known only to the participants, I'm sure that you'll be able to relate to the lessons shared between the pixels.

Andy At the Apple Store

Yesterday afternoon, my colleague, Andy Forgrave and I set out from the OTF 21st Century Skills Conference, to visit a brick and mortar Apple Store. Our goal, was to write a children's book to document our trip. I think this is a nice model for how a slidedeck can be used to turn photos and blocks of text into an e-book.

Andy At the Apple Store

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After sharing the original slidedeck, I thought it would be interesting to invite text submissions for new versions. Almost immediately, this fresh take was contributed by Karen Littlewood

One day Andy went to the mall

There was an apple on the wall

Andy wondered what’s inside

It was unlike any apple he’d ever spied

he felt like he was being led

then the glowing apple was on his head!

He thought and thought and thought some more

Then took a step inside the store

The store was like a tekkie fair

On the wall, a Macbook Air

Andy saw an iPhone 4

And a wall of programs in that store

Cords and cables far and near

Beautiful headphones so he could hear

Little shuffles in colours bold and bright

And free Internet, time to check some sites

Andy sat and played a while

That Mighty Mouse sure has some style!

The pics in the game made him stare

Then he got a sticker for playing fair

Andy looked at the man in blue

He knew he had one last thing to do

He could help the customers too!!

One last pic in the Apple store

We all know Andy will be back for MORE!!

The set of photos that were used to create this 'book', are now available for download. If you or your students would like to remix 'Andy At the Apple Store', or if you take this idea and create an entirely new product, I'd love to learn about it...

Educon: Field Guide for Change Agents

A few months ago, I had a discussion with Ben Hazzard about how we might engage educators in producing an e-book to assist and encourage change agents. The result of our efforts was a workshop that took place this afternoon at Educon 2.2.

Instead of providing a 'presentation-style' workshop, our goal was to leverage easy-to-use collaborative web tools and to lead interested co-learners in the creation of practical, shareable content. Teaching by doing, we did our best to model:

1] how to build relationships among project participants;
2] how to contribute to shared documents simultaneously;
3] how to attribute Creative Commons licensed content;
4] how to offer 'choice' to participants;
5] how to take shared responsibility in creating a product;
6] how to engage remote participants in a meaningful way;
7] how to create and distribute a product for a real world audience.

Field Guide For Change Agents

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"This Field Guide for Change Agents was developed during a workshop at Educon 2.2 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in January 30, 2009. As workshop leaders, we were honoured to have participation by educators from around the world, including remote participants who joined us via Elluminate."

The creators have agreed to license their work with an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Creative Commons license. You are free to share or adapt the work, on the condition that the author page and photo attributions are included.

Late addition: One of our online participants, Lorna Costantini, has written a blog post about the experience that really affirms the value of the processes we adopted.