Students use Booki to write their own textbook
A few weeks ago I wrote about wanting to see students writing their own textbooks using Booki…well, crazily it seems this has just happened ‘all by itself”. I was watching the activity on Booki over some weeks (its building steadily) and I noticed a book appear that seemed to have a lot of activity immediately. As it happens it is a project lead by Kieran Nolan who teaches at DkIT in Ireland (http://www.dkit.ie/creativemedia).
Kieran has asked students to create a book together using Booki. The project is for a module called ‘User Theories’ which Kieran leads for 4th year students in the BA (Hons) in Communications and Creative Multimedia. The course looks at different interactive media types, different user groups and the creative ways in which people repurpose and reuse all the digital creation and distribution.
In Kierans words:
“The topic we had last week in class was ‘Emotive Design’ and trying to reduce user frustration with interactive media. In other words looking at ideas of giving interactive products personality (for instance, avatars) so that users feel some sort of connection and less alienated to the product. So the student’s are been asked to reflect on the readings and come up with their own idea for an ‘emotive interface’.”
Rather than create the content individually, Kieran has asked the students to create a book collaboratively and likes the idea of Booki because the class can share their ideas, learn from each other, and are practicing using a collaborative online tool. The fact that the students can produce a book from the result adds another dimension for Kieran:
“It bridges the gap between digital and print media and produces a tangible product.”
Kieran will utilise the history feature of Booki to track a student’s contribution to the project. The work will count towards 15% of the courses final mark.