It is with great pleasure and no small amount of relief, that I announce the second edition of Cultivating Your Personal Learning Network: A Gardener’s Approach to Learning – formerly known as A Gardener’s approach to Learning: Cultivating at our Personal Learning Network. Switching the title and subtitle was the idea of my wife and business manager, Brenda. She’d long felt that “A Gardener’s Approach..” did not clearly describe the content and function of the book.
This second edition started innocently enough when, with an afternoon to kill, I downloaded Apples iBooks Author (iBA) software, a free download that helps us create interactive iBooks for publishing through the iBooks book store and iTunes. Since it was my latest book, I dumped the text of Gardener’s Approach.. into iBA and started playing. My initial reaction was not that different from what I initially though if iBooks. They glow and flow, but provide little opportunity for the reader to talk back, which I believe should be a core goal for the next generation of learning content. The iBooks I’d seen were still primarily intended for top-down reader-passive content consumption.
However, when I started factoring in the great fun I’ve had with Apple Keynote’s dazzling animation capabilities and the ability to insert keynotes into the iBook, I continued to play, adding animated tutorials for some parts of the book.
I initially struggled with the HTML feature of iBooks, which I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. I’ve been coding in HTML for nearly 20 years. They I learned…
It seems that what iBook Author means by HTML is actually Dashboard Widgets, which are small programs that can be downloaded and installed on your Macintosh computer and run in the background – and now in the widgets space on later versions of Mac’s OS. They have come in nearly every category of software, but are usually utilities such as calculators, calendars and clocks. I saw no use for any of these utilities in my book, so I set out researching and teaching myself how to write my own dashboard widgets.
As I played (which is what learning often feels like to me), ideas started forming for interfacing my iBook with the web and specifically with web pages that would give readers the ability to add and comment on their own stories of networked learning. It was at that point that I was hooked.
Of course, reading through the book, I learned how dreadfully out-of-date it was, so I started editing and rewriting major portions of CYPLN and adding at least one chapter. After all, the first edition was written before the Apple iPad launched. So, after many edits and re-edits, with the tireless assistance of Brenda, and the launch of Bookry, which provides a tool for creating much slicker widgets than I was writing, I’ve published Cultivating Your Personal Learning Network 2nd Ed, in print, ebook (for Kindle), and iBook (with color, motion, and conversation).
The most interesting part of this endeavor was the act of using many of the skills and techniques described in the book in order to learn how to publish it in these new formats and with these new features. My own PLN grew.
I hurriedly produced the video below as an introduction to some of the features of the iBooks version.
The print and ebook versions, like the first edition of CYPLN, feature QR-Codes, which give the reader access to many of the features of the iBook – without the flair.
One concept that jelled for me during the proces was that of scale. Because the ebook and iBook versions of CYPLN was digital, weightless and so easily distributed, I’ve decided to price for scale. So the iBook and ebook (Kindle) versions are only $2.99 (USD). Since the print version (259 pages) must be produced and shipped, I have to charge a little more, $8.99, which gives me a profit similar to that of the digital books.
This will take you to a page with links to the various purchasing venues: http://goo.gl/EUu7B
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David,
I am so excited you took the leap with iBooks author and have provided it via the iBookstore, downloading now.
Purchased. Looking forward to reading/experiencing this.
Reading about your process got me hooked. Thanks for sharing the tidbit about HTML. Buying both the iBook and Kindle version to compare the experience you created. I am looking for a way to get parents who do not have tablets to experience materials their kids create for the iDevices we have in schools. Any suggestions? Is there an ebook reader tool for PC that allows user to experience any of the interactivity you speak of or that could make an interactive book available cross platform (tablet bad computer). Who ever thought we would be asking such questions?
I’ve just downloaded the book and, based on what you demo in the video, I can’t wait to dive in and think about ways to help teachers build their own personal learning networks.
In case of online learning and teaching, many helpful tools are available online. One such tool is called virtual classroom. You can find this tool at http://www.wiziq.com/virtual_classroom.aspx. Over 150,000 teachers and 2 million learners are already using WizIQ and they also offer 30-day free trial.