A conference for Leaders and Classroom Practitioners in Asia's World City!

iPhone App: How'd you do that?

Kudos to the student tech team for creating the iPhone / smart phone web application for the conference!

How did you all manage to create this so quickly? I'm very curious what tools you used to do this, since I'm sure there are many other conferences in other places that would love to have the same functionality.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dianne Mckenzie on September 18, 2009 at 7:39am: Not only the tools - but also the language of creating iphone apps - isn't it complicated and really geeky?

Please share....; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Wesley Fryer on September 19, 2009 at 5:30am: Well, I doubt it is as easy as using Google docs to create an iPhone app - but it is also likely not as difficult as coding something from scratch.

I learned the answer yesterday, discussing this with Justin Hardman. He said students at HKIS downloaded the free / open source Webkit for iPhone/iTouch web application development, and figured out how to create it in short order! It appears there are several downloads and installs you need to do to use it, depending on your platform, but I do NOT think you have to register and pay as an official “Apple Developer” to use; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by techucator on September 20, 2009 at 7:44pm: I saw the iPhone applications - and was also impressed. Was this really done by students? If so, HKIS must be very happy to have such 'tech kids'. There were many schools involved - was it HKIS? How do the HKIS technology classes support this kind of higher level teaching. I have some very good students at my school, and would like for them to learn iPod web applications - how is it done? What software is provided - do students need to download Webkit, or are licenses available?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by HKIS Film Club on September 20, 2009 at 8:10pm: On behalf of the Tech Crew from the Hong Kong International School working at the 21st Century Learning Conference, I would like to say thank you. The Iphone webpage/app was made by HKIS students specifically one student who is extremely proficient with web design. Keep checking the 21st Century Learning Conference webpage and Iphone site to see more videos of events at the conference!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by HKIS SysOps on September 20, 2009 at 9:12pm: Hello,

The iPhone site was developed by the High School "SysOps" club. This was our first chance to work on the Iphone platform and I am very pleased with how it turned out especially with such a limited time frame and small crew (3 people).

We started production 2 weeks before the conference, a scary thought made even scarier when we started a countdown timer. The only complications we had with the site was the fact that I had to constantly borrow someones iPhone or iPod Touch and the live blog / video upload system. Although none were used to their fullest potential, we can now use and implement them in our future products.

We created the iPhone site using an open-source framework called jqTouch. I believe it has an MIT license so you don't need to pay or sign up for anything, just download and edit the demo file provided.

If anyone has any more comments please feel free to ask them her or email us at dragonnet@hkis.edu.hk, I'd love to explain more about our design processes etc.

Also, thanks to the Film Club for putting up with us and for creating some amazing videos in such short time. It was a real great experience! I would also like to thank the other members of SysOps. Sinyak for being such a great leader, AJ for his dedication, Mr. Hardman for his efforts, and the minions (that showed up) for helping out!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by HKIS SysOps on September 20, 2009 at 9:39pm: The hard working guy that just wrote the above message forgot to mention his name. Keiran Lovett made the iPhone site mostly on his own, with some help from the rest of Sysops on content management and graphic design.

Alex Sinyak,
Director of System Operations (Sysops); ▶ Reply to This