Community

Gibbon Hackathon 2017

Join us for Gibbon Hackathon 2017, our second annual community coding event. This is a chance for passionate programmers to contribute to the Gibbon open source school platform. We hope to combine the knowledge of experienced Gibbon programmers with the enthusiasm of new comers to the community, to work on new features for Gibbon v15. Details in the poster below (click for a larger version). Supported by The International School of Macao, click here for directions.

Please email support@gibbonedu.org for enquiries and registration.

Gibbon Hackathon, October 21st, 10am – 4pm.

RaspberryPi Alarm

One of the most joyful and empowering aspects of open source development is the mindset and ability to take someone else’s system, and then adjust it to fit some edge case you encounter. This approach to solving problems has been exemplified by Jack Dickson, who used a Raspberry Pi, some Python code and a Gibbon forum post to stitch together an alarm actuator. The code, running on the Pi, repeatedly polls the Gibbon database, and when it detects an alarm has been issued, it uses speakers and lights to make the alarm obvious to users not logged into the system.

In this approach we see a vital kind of creative collaboration: Jack had the original idea, and he reached out to find out more. The Gibbon team were able to provide some insights, which allowed Jack to then write up the code. This distributed, friendly and open collaboration leads to a level of creativity that is so much less likely when we lock things down, and deal with customers instead of a community.

The video below shows the system in action:

Jack has kindly made the source code freely available, and it can be downloaded here.

A huge thanks to Jack for adding another piece to the Gibbon puzzle.

On a side note, I really hate the fact that our world needs the Alarm function, which was designed for school lockdown scenarios. The day I coded it up was not a happy one, and I hope to never see it used in practice.

Gibbon Training Day 2017

Overview

Users, admins & developers, come join us for our first ever Gibbon Training Day: a chance to ask and answer questions, meet new people and build a community.

April 22nd, 10am – 3pm HK, MakerBay Kowloon. Featuring presentations and hands on workshops. Attend online or IRL. Free of change.

Sign up and select sessions at https://goo.gl/forms/DM3IYDc1wLVh19VC3. More details below the poster.

Digital Participation

Digital participation is limited to 25 people per session, and will be take place via Google Hangouts, using the support@gibbonedu.org Google Account. We will send you an invite prior to the start of the event: please make sure to accept this so that we can include you in our call. On the day, we will set up a video call, and then call up those who have registered on a per session basis.

Session Schedule

Based on feedback given in the original registration process, we have put together the following session schedule. Please note all sessions will be run on Hong Kong Time (HKT):

1. Welcome To Gibbon (10:00-10:30 HKT)
   1. Features
   2. v14 & v15
   3. Gibbon on mobile
2. Getting Started With Gibbon (10:30-11:15 HKT)
   1. Downloading
   2. Installing
   3. Setting up a school
3. Modifying Gibbon (11:15-12:15 HKT)
   1. Built-in options
   2. Module building
   3. Core development
   4. Integrating with other systems
4. Gibbon Servers & Partnerships (13:00-13:45 HKT)
   1. Setting Up A Server
   2. Commercial Support
5. Gibbon & Curriculum (13:45-14:45 HKT)
   1. Unit & lesson planning
   2. Assessment
   3. Reporting
   4. Free Learning
6. Question & Answer (14:45-15:00 HKT)

There will be a lunch break from 12:15 to 13:00.

Session Videos

Getting Started:

Modifying Gibbon:

Servers:

Curriculum:

Question & Answer: