Month: May 2014

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iBooks Author Training Video and Free Guide

IBA DesktopHere’s session one of my recent iBooks Author (iBA) training workshop. This one-hour session was designed to introduce iBA to about a dozen teacher at LaSalle Catholic College Preparatory in Portland Ore. I covered what can iBA do and workflow suggestions for next steps. I stressed it’s not about  the technology –  book design begins with content, audience and purpose. Their next step is to gather content, think about how to present it with iBA’s native (and second party) widgets.  

Here’s a resource site I built for the session Get Started with iBA 

If you want to follow along with my widget review -download my guide – Quick Start: iBooks Author free at iTunes I’m demonstrating all the widgets found in chapter 2. 

We shot a video of the session using a stationary webcam. Not the best quality (off center and off mic) – but some may find it useful. Here’s a rough outline of what I discussed.
1. Widget intro (chapter 2 in Quick Start: iBooks Author)
2. I demonstrated project work flow using my latest iBA project “Lost Japantown PDX” (working title).  See reveal widget video demonstration here. 

  • Gather content and archive in Evernote
  • Format content – edit video, crop images, edit text
  • Begin layout of book pages in a program like Keynote. Remember that it’s not easy to rearrange pages in iBA. Keynote provide a simple way to get you content in order
  • Begin to build iBook in iBA.

3. Considerations – file size, user experience, copyright
4. A collaborative iBook design project I did with my University of Portland students Exploring History – free at iTunes.

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Free iBook Explores Ancient Egypt

Meet Alex the Archaeologist

The Memorial Art Gallery Rochester NY recently published Ancient Egypt: Exploring Ancient Artifacts with Alex the Archaeologist. It’s available free from the iTunes Store.
Full disclosure: I’ve assisted MAG on a number of projects and was a “mentor” on this iBook. 

Ancient Egypt is interactive resource for teachers and students featuring video host – “Alex the Archeologist.” (Played by Alexander Smith, a Mediterranean archaeologist and graduate student at Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World.)

Chapters include: Government and Wealth, Power and Protection, Gods and Goddesses, Journey to the Afterlife and a very interactive guide to reading hieroglyphics. “Stop and think” questions throughout the book foster student reflection. An illustrated glossary helps foster defining skills. Students can zoom in to closely examine artifacts and try their hand at interpreting hieroglyphics.

God Osiris

Designed for classroom use by grades 6–12, Ancient Egypt is the first in a series for young people studying the ancient world. Using the Gallery’s collection of artifacts, this thematic object-centered exploration uses works of art, timelines, video clips, photographs, and interactive media to take students into the world of earlier civilizations. It meets Common Core Standards as students learn to read objects as primary source texts.

The Memorial Art Gallery has many other great resources available online. A good place to start is at Passport to the Past. It features collections of image sets sized for use on Smartboards or in PowerPoints

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