50 States of iBooks Author

In order to properly illustrate the sheer depth of how iBooks Author, Apple's digital publishing software and one of Steve Jobs' final legacies, is shaping digital content creation, we explored state-by-state how iBooks Author is being used by creatives, educators, and next-generation content creators.

From underpinning political campaigns, to replacing expensive textbooks and saving students money, to telling rich and personal histories through multimedia, iBooks Author has carved out a new landscape of content creation.  Pioneers all over the country are using the software in remarkable and varied ways.  As I discussed earlier this year for The Bookseller, iBooks Author is demonstrably winning the "innovation game" in digital publishing since its major update in the summer of 2015.

This compilation, and a deeper exploration of some findings from this process, will be discussed during a special session taking place at the 2016 iBooks Author Conference, taking place October 6-7 in Nashville, TN.

Enjoy!

Bradley Metrock, CEO Score Publishing
Helping People Become Better Interactive Content Creators

-------------------

Alabama: Karen Burns, instructional developer at the University of Alabama, created a digital book on Creating Accessible Websites using iBooks Author.  Auburn University hosts an annual "iTeach" event centered around using iPads for teaching and learning, with iBooks Author digital content creation often front and center.  (Apple CEO Tim Cook is a graduate of Auburn University as well!)

Alaska: Young fiction author Sterling Emmal, as we reported previously on the iBooks Author Conference blog, has used iBooks Author to publish multiple titles into the iBooks Store.  And this past summer, University of Alaska Southeast adjunct Peter Pappas lead the creation of the Multicultural Alaska History Series, in which 37 students helped put together an epic six-iBook series detailing the different parts of the state.

Arizona: The University of Arizona's College of Medicine has a program called "SOS," which stands for "Support for Office Staff," and involves UA faculty within their College of Medicine training other educators in various technology.  iBooks Author is a frequent topic of these workshops they provide, helping educators create next-generation content.

Arkansas: Dr. Michael Mills, assistant professor at the University of Central Arkansas and Education Chair of the 2016 iBooks Author Conference, published the academic paper Student Preference of a Customized, Open-Access Multi-Touch Textbook In A Graduate Education Course earlier this year.  This paper, featured at ISTE, provides some of the first data-driven evidence of what we know is true: educators and students alike are better off when creating digital content with iBooks Author.

California: The University of California (Irvine) hosted a "Med iBook Jam" in which teams of medical students and faculty came together to create iBooks, using iBooks Author, over a four-day competition.  This is one of the most innovative approaches to creating digital content we've seen used anywhere, worldwide, by any institution, educational or not.  California is also home to Tumult, maker of Hype (and Hype Pro), the popular HTML5 animation tool which complements iBooks Author books remarkably well.

Colorado: Michele Morris, owner of "Cooking with Michele" and a veteran chef and sommelier located in Denver, has produced a number of cookbooks using iBooks Author.  The most recent, called Ice Cream, released earlier in 2016.

Connecticut:  The Gilbert School, located in Winsted, Connecticut, has used iBooks Author to leverage its 1:1 iPad program, building a poetry text for use in classes and getting underway with books on sports medicine as well as the founder of the school.

DC: The National Archives, located in Washington DC, have produced a number of iBooks designed to highlight aspects of exhibits or extend the core experience provided by the museum.  One such iBook was released earlier this year: Amending America provides a fascinating exploration of how more than 11,000 proposed constitutional amendments have been reduced to the 27 ratified amendments we have in place today.  The book is available from the iBooks Store here.

Delaware: The Delaware Law Blog has astutely pointed out the potential application of the iBook format within the universe of litigation and legal briefs.  This blog post links to another fantastic read, from SF law firm Cogent Legal, on the topic of how iPads (and iBooks created with iBooks Author) can be deployed in the courtroom and elsewhere to give lawyers an edge.

Florida: Lynn University, a private college located in Boca Raton, is setting a fantastic example of how colleges across the country can use iBooks Author to replace textbooks across an entire institution.  The Lynn University Digital Press, which operates out of the school's library, works with educators to create their own digital textbooks (and they each receive a $2,000 stipend for each book created) saving students money, putting more money in the pockets of educators, and improving operations across the school.

Georgia: Dr. Frank Lowney, projects coordinator for the Digital Innovation Group at Georgia College (the state's designated public liberal arts university), published an excellent treatise on the state of academic publishing and how digital publishing, specifically with iBooks Author, will help shape the future.  This work, called The Coming ePublishing Revolution in Higher Education, is available itself as an iBook from Apple's iBooks Store.

Hawaii: In Hawaii, we have Shay Chan Hodges, an iBooks Author user who has provided the blueprint on how to use an iBook to springboard a political campaign!  After releasing Lean On And Lead: Mothering and Work In The 21st Century Economy to the iBooks Store, she decided to turn her considerable talents to the political arena, running for Congress in Hawaii's second district.

Idaho: Boise State's instructional design team led a "Textbook ePublishing Boot Camp" in which faculty could apply to participate and work year-round with Boise State staff to create their own textbooks for use in their classes.  "Graduates" of this boot camp received a $1,000 stipend as well as opportunities to participate in further eTextbook research going on within the university, along with having support made available to them with all aspects of iBooks Author at any time it was needed.  We believe this model is how many universities should approach using iBooks Author to create textbooks: begin in the summer, provide year-round support to build the book over time, and ramp up to using the newly-created book the following school year.

Illinois: In 2012, the city of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs released City of Chicago Cultural Plan, a multi-touch book created with iBooks Author - and is the only city to do so in the United States of which we're aware.  The digital book is a fascinating read and well put together - you can download it from the iBooks Store here.

Indiana: Daniel Patmore, an award-winning photojournalist, used iBooks Author to create a multi-touch history book of the town of Huntingburg, Indiana.  The iBook, available here, begins with an intro media video of over 8 minutes in length showing off an impressive array of photographs of the town set to ragtime music.  For residents living here, this iBook would be a veritable treasure trove of memories encapsulated into a piece of next-generation content.

Iowa: The University of Northern Iowa's Center for Teaching and Learning Mathematics (CTLM) used iBooks Author to produce a series of professional development iBooks for Iowa elementary school math educators to help them hone their craft.  A team of UNI faculty, along with math experts from across the state of Iowa, pitched in to create these digital books, assisted with funding from state grants.  Making Sense of Geometry, one of the iBooks in this series, is available on the iBooks Store here.

Kansas: Kansas State University technology integration coordinator Cyndi Danner-Kuhn used iBooks Author in 2014 to create her own digital replacement for the $90 textbook for her teaching class, saving her students $25,000 annually.

Kentucky: University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy educator Melanie Dicks, with the help of UK pedagogy specialist Lisa Nichols, trained with Score Publishing - producer of the annual iBooks Author Conference - to learn iBooks Author and use it to create digital content for Dicks' introductory pharmacy coursework.

Louisiana: New Orleans-area startup Epilogue created the award-winning graphic novel Hotel Whiskey Tango, an iBooks Author creation described by one of the company's founders as "digital pulp fiction."  iBooks Author, originally created to "digitally destroy" the educational textbook market, has far exceeded those limited boundaries and is used by digital content creators literally in every walk of life, including fiction writers like the three behind Epilogue.

Maine: Foxcroft Academy, a private boarding school located in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, was the first high school in Maine to adopt a 1:1 iPad program (in which there is one iPad for each student).  Foxcroft Academy's student handbook is available as a multi-touch book on the iBooks Store, and another iBook highlighting the school's innovative approaches to teaching and learning is available here.

Maryland: Nice Oak Interactive, and founder Stephan Beauchesne, has produced some of the finest business iBooks ever made.  Based in Bethesda, Maryland, Nice Oak also created WidgetsHub.com, a widgets marketplace where content creators and buy and sell HTML5-based widgets intended for use in interactive books, particularly those created in iBooks Author.

Massachusetts: Few media outlets, if any, have done more with iBooks Author than the Boston Globe.  From 68 Blocks to Massachusetts by the Numbers and many others, the Boston Globe has leveraged the creation of next-generation digital books to become a valuable subscriber benefit, helping to grow its revenue as well as brand.

Michigan: Zeeland, Michigan, is home of one of the first iBooks Author educator workshops, iBookHack, and its founder, Anthony DiLaura.  Since 2012, iBookHack has traveled around the country introducing educators of all kinds to iBooks Author, and opening eyes to the types of next-generation digital content the software is capable of producing.

Minnesota: The University of Minnesota leads an annual eLearning Summit and, as part of it, personalized learning specialist Chris Turnbull presents on how to create interactive, multimedia-driven textbooks using Apple's iBooks Author.  A SlideShare of one of her previous presentations at this conference is available here.

Mississippi: Jackson State University, under the care of laboratory manager Mahesh Nayak, reduced textbook costs as much as 93% across parts of the university thanks to creating replacements with iBooks Author.  The school, which is recognized as an Apple Distinguished School, have outlined a ten-year vision for how iBooks will transform the school's entire teaching and learning process.

Missouri: Founded in 1914 and headquartered in Missouri, HNTB is a civil design and architecture firm involved in infrastructure consulting and construction projects all over the world.  The company's proposal team uses iBooks Author, among other software, to create digital collateral that helps them win new business as well as detail how they delivered on previous projects.

Montana: As originally reported by DB Hebbard of Talking New Media, the environmental disaster of the vermiculite mine in Libby, Montana, was the subject of a fantastic iBook put together by journalists Andrew Schneider and David McCumber.  The depth of iBooks Author and the various interactivity and multimedia helps tell the story of this disaster in a way few media could.  An Air That Still Kills is available for download from the iBooks Store here.

Nebraska: The Nebraska Department of Education, recognizing gaps in the coverage of traditional textbooks and wanting to provide state educators with additional resources, decided to use iBooks Author to solve that problem.  The NeBooks project was launched to allow students, educators, and partner agencies to create content that could then be shared across the state (and beyond), all created within iBooks Author and published as interactive, multimedia-driven books.  The project's coordinator, Kristina Peters, springboarded from the success of the project to a role within the US Department of Education itself.

Nevada: Following the movement toward gamification, the Nevada Community School District implemented a badge system in which educators visit "Nevada's World of Learning," learn about a particular technology or topic, receive a badge, and then can share that badge with the world via social media and other means.  One of these badges was created for iBooks Author - one of the earliest examples of an iBA badge of which we're aware - which can be earned by the educator (or educator's class) creating an iBook and submitting it to the Apple iBooks Store to earn it.

New Hampshire: Dartmouth's instructional technologists have supported faculty over the last few years in creating iBooks to either complement their classroom teaching or to fully replace traditional textbooks altogether.  Student feedback to the iBooks has been consistently stellar and more faculty have become involved in the iBook creation effort over time.  One of the iBooks, Enveloped Viruses, Influenza, and Interferon by Dartmouth professor Edward Usherwood, is available on the iBooks Store here.

New Jersey: New Jersey residents Dean and Susan Hammond have used the combination of iBooks Author, as well as Tumult's popular HTML5 animation tool Hype, to publish a number of books as part of their growing self-publishing enterprise.  Dean's book Grapes In My Shower offers perspective on many different aspects of life, while Susan's series of children's books offer over 20 titles in total on the iBooks Store.  The couple is the perfect example of how iBooks Author, along with other complementary tools, can create new revenue streams and new opportunities for people with stories to tell.

New Mexico:  Located in Taos, New Mexico, author John Hamilton Farr used iBooks Author's ability to export EPUB files (which was a new feature introduced the summer of 2015) to publish his deeply personal account of his family's move to Taos, New Mexico, where stirring scenery and views are married to a dark, violent heritage.  The book, called Another Day in Paradise: Notes from Taos, is available on the iBooks Store here.

New York: Columbia University's Paulette Bernd worked with fellow students as well as Columbia's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning to develop a new interactive dissector using iBooks Author.  Today, Columbia University medical students learn the body with a dissector that was developed internally and released across five iBooks, all available on Apple's iBooks Store.  Additionally in the health care realm, and within the state of New York, NYU's Langone Medical Center and their instructional designer, So-Young Oh, released How To Create e-Learning Materials for Health Care Professionals to the iBooks Store (available here), also using iBooks Author.

North Carolina: The Coastwalk North Carolina project, created by "coastal naturalists" Cathy and Peter Meyer, encompasses their 425-mile journey from the South Carolina border and finishing at the Virginia border.  Essays on their travels are accompanied by multimedia highlighting various points of interest and encounters along the way.  The project is broken up across a series of four iBooks, and is explained in further detail here.

North Dakota: Mark Coppin, the Director of Assistive Technologies for the Anne Carlsen Center, is an educator who frequently speaks on the topic of accessibility in iBooks Author and the importance of accessibility in next-generation content creation.  He frequently gives workshops like this one which showcase the flexibility of iBooks Author to meet the needs of all different types of learners.

Ohio: Jon Smith, educator and technology integrator for Alliance City Schools in Dayton, Ohio, used iBooks Author (along with the popular mobile application Book Creator) to enable students from all over the world to collaborate together to produce one single book.  Smith's "TWIMA" project, which stands for The World Is My Audience, is a fascinating example of how iBooks Author can and should be used to promote creative collaboration in the modern classroom.

Oklahoma: In a paper published earlier this year, Oklahoma professor Paul Sims and his team detailed how their free introductory biochemistry textbook, developed with iBooks Author, has led to enhanced teaching and learning outcomes.  The book, originally released in 2013, is available for download here.

Oregon: Oregon State computer-assisted cartography students created an interactive book, using iBooks Author, called Atlas of the Polar Regions to demonstrate the effects of climate change on some of the most remote and mysterious parts of the planet.  The book won myriad awards (though has not been nominated for an iBA Award - perhaps this will change this year!) and is available here.

Pennsylvania: The inaugural iBooks Author Conference keynote was delivered by Dr. Julia Maurer of Mercersburg Academy, a private boarding school in southern Pennsylvania.  This school pioneered the process of paying faculty to develop their own in-house textbooks using iBooks Author, saving students well over $100,000 over the first couple of years and improving the school's educational outcomes in the process.  

Rhode Island: Rocky Hill, an independent college prep school located on a sprawling 84 acres in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, arms their students with iPads and arms faculty with iBooks Author to use to create content.  Eighth grade students were even able to create their own iBook as part of a middle school class.

South Carolina: As reported by Apple's own education website, kindergarten teacher Kristi Meeuwse used iBooks Author to create a number of books for her class of young children at Drayton Hall Elementary School in Charleston, South Carolina.  The result?  Her children all - as in every one of them - read at above grade level, for the first time in Meeuwse's professional teaching career.  Kristi Meeuwse's iBook on Drayton Hall's use of iPads in teaching and learning is available on the iBooks Store here.

South Dakota: South Dakota residents David and Barbara Walder used iBooks Author to delve into the history of the 1926 girls high school basketball team for Hayti High School in Hayti, South Dakota, in a deeply personal and interesting look at particular snapshot in time for one particular group of women playing sport together.  David's mother, Gladyce Sour, played on the team and it is clear her memories (as kept in diaries and pictures) are cherished and memorialized in a way that iBooks Author is uniquely able to accomplish.

Tennessee: Fritz Lauriston, physics educator at Battle Ground Academy, worked with Score Publishing to produce his fantastic digital textbook Physics in Motion and publish it to Apple's iBooks Store.  Tennessee is also home to the iBooks Author Conference, the annual gathering of the iBooks Author user community across all industries and sectors, creatives and educators alike.

Texas: An enterprising entrepreneur took the Texas Driver's License exam and created an iBook out of the state's preparation materials for it.  The Texas Driver's Handbook: Interactive Study Guide is available from the iBooks Store here and features a layer of interactivity added to what would normally be made available as a static PDF.  Texas is also home to Southwest Airlines' instructional design team, which uses iBooks Author to create the internal training curriculum that powers the world's best airline and one of the largest companies in the world.  (Southwest Airlines' instructional designers will be keynoting the 2016 iBooks Author Conference.)

Utah: Utah-based Ancestry.com partnered with University of North Carolina's School of Education to produce a deeply interesting iBook exploring the correlation between personal interest in family ancestry and positive community involvement.  That book, Family History in the Classroom, is available on the iBooks Store here and highlights how nine individual educators used their own family histories in the classroom to increase engagement and build empathy.

Vermont: The University of Vermont's director of technology in the College of Education, Laurie Gelles, has used iBooks Author to allow future teachers to document work with students for future assessment, as well as to conduct other research into new methods of teaching and learning.

Virginia: The Virginia Economic Development Partnership used iBooks Author to create Virginia: The Best State for Business, a multi-touch format book which uses rich infographics, audio, and video interviews to tell the story of why Forbes ranked the state as one of the best for commerce in the nation.  The book is available to download from the iBooks Store here.

Washington: Boeing, and its educational technologists (many of which are based in Seattle), have used iBooks Author extensively to create interactive, multimedia-driven content, the vast majority of which has remained confidential and only available inside the company.

West Virginia: Educator Bill Kuykendall used iBooks Author to create Memories of a Mountaineer, an iBook which recounts the life of Richwood, West Virginia's Sterling Spencer and his late 19th century/early 20th century life as a hunter and subsistence farmer.  The synthesis of broadcast-quality interviews, high-resolution photography and in-depth narratives is something made possible only by iBooks Author, and is a stellar example of how history can be laid bare using the format.

Wisconsin: Wisconsin Media Lab, "Wisconsin's Home For Teachers," curates multimedia educational resources which connect Wisconsin education standards and are vetted by Wisconsin educators.  iBooks Author was used to produce several of these resources, including, for example, Chief Oshkosh: Leader In Troubled Times, an iBook available on the iBooks Store.

Wyoming: The University of Wyoming's "Science Posse," a group of graduate students in various STEM fields, has used iBooks Author to craft a number of educational resources for use across the state of Wyoming (and beyond) that are distributed through iTunes U, Apple's education hub.  Learn more about this project here.