Book Sprint Experience

The Squeakland Education team has been in existence since 2005 and we have established very strong bonds through our weekly online meetings and annual conferences. We started our own book sprint to write a reference manual and devoted a week of intense writing by several people from the Squeakland community. We filled the manual with a huge amount of valuable written and graphical material. However, we didn't completely finish both the content and the organization. So we were elated about our selection to come to the doc sprint at Google. Now that we have participated in writing a book Learning with Etoys: Imagine, Invent, Inspire, we see the value of being in the same physical space. Google provided a fantastic physical space. Adam Hyde from booki Floss Manuals was brilliant in focusing the participants on the process and monitoring our project. Allen Gunn directed an sizzling unconference, where we wrote up topics we thought were needed to be successful in the doc sprint and magically organized breakout sessions for the afternoon - fun fun fun. Thank you to Carol Smith for the great organization. The total experience was great.

In the photograph from left to right: Stephen Thomas, Kathleen Smith, Rita Freudenberg, Avigail Snir, Randall Caton, and Kathleen Harness