Indie EdTech and The Personal API

Where I started working on the material for this workshop I wanted to pull together a toolbox that I could use across all of the conversations that I would be having at Davidson College this week, provide some tooling that could be used in the workshop, wrapped in rich content that could we be read during, and after the event.

I'm not sure I achieved 100% of what I wanted. The material is here, but it is still pretty busy, verbose, and less hands on than I originally envisioned. Regardless I've tried to break things down and make them scannable, as well as being full of rabbit holes of API concepts that keep you busy for a long time.

Here is the general outline of this workshop materials:

• Why APIs? - You are using APIs every day to pay for things at the store, taking pictures with Instagram, all the way to banking online. The more you understand this world of APIs, the more successful you will be in your personal, and professional career, empowering you to to take more control over more of your digial self.
• What is a website? - A website is a folder on a computer that is plugged into the Internet that has been given an Internet address, and when it is assigned a domain or subdomain, becomes something anyone with the address is able find on the Internet.
• What is an API? - A API is just like a website, except that instead of returning HTML for humans, it returns RSS, XML, JSON, and other machine readable formats meant for other applications.
• The History of APIs - Web APIs have a history, just slightly shorter than that of the web itself, beggining in 2000, from a a PHD students doctoral thesis, but much of what we associated with the web, is in fact driven by APIs.
• The Programmable Web - APIs are not just for serving up content, data and other resources for use in applications and devices. HTTP allows APIs to be used for reading, as well as writing digital resources, making the web programmable, not just something we consume--that is, if you are in the know.
• Some APIs In Your World - Let's explore just a handful of APIs that are making an impact in your world, and learn about some of their details.
• The University API - In 2016, APIs are making their way onto campus in several ways. Sometimes it is campus IT leading the way, others efforts are born of vendors selling software on campus, from faculty making it part of their regular work or courses, and is also being brought in by the students--resulting in many doorways to consider when emarking on an API journey on campus.
• The Personal API - Amidst all of this, there is a new concept emerging that is centered around you. It is being dubbed the personal API, leveraging an awareness of all things APIs, understanding how your personal data is used and shared, allowing you to take more control over yourself, the content and data you generate online, in operations at your work, and in your future career.

This workshop runs as a simple HTML, CSS, JavaScript website, operating as a Github repository, using Jekyll and Github Pages. You can fork the project, and play with any of the examples here on this project, or your own version running in your Github account.

This project is created by the API Evangelist, Kin Lane. If you have any questions, you can tweet at me via @kinlane or @apievangelist, or use the Github Issues for this project.